






JAM 23 1898 

Of Cong'S 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


Chap.J\^ Copyright No._ 

ShelfjBjSS" 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



































Distorts of a Citt3en 







» 










DEC 221897 0 $ {} 


Dtsfons of a CUf3en 


BRIEF ESSAYS FROM 

THE WRITINGS AND PUBLIC ADDRESSES OF 
PROFESSOR J. J.^BLAISDELL, 

OF BELOIT COLLEGE, 

WISCONSIN 



FOR SALE BY 

Congregational Sunday-School & Publishing Society 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO 


^ \ c\ ^ V 









Copyright, 1897, 

By James A. Blaisdell. 



The Cambridge Press, Chicago, U. S. A. 
Printed and Bound by Marsh & Grant Printing Co. 










TO 

PRESIDENT EDWARD D. EATON 

AND TO THE 

faculty and students 

OE 

Beloit College 

THIS VOEUME IS INSCRIBED;— 

BY THE TOUCH OF A VANISHED HAND 
















But thou would'st not alone 
Be saved , my father , alone 
Conquer and come to thy goal , 
Leaving the rest in the wild. 

IVe were weary, ive 
Fearful . and we in our march 
Fain to drop doivn and to die. 

Still thou turnedst, and still 
Gavest the weary thy hand. 

If, in the paths of the world , 

Stones might have wounded thy feet, 
Toil or dejection have tried 
Thy spirit , of that we saw 
Nothing—to us thou wast still 
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! 
Therefore to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself; 

And at the end of thy day, 

Ofaithful shepherd! to come, 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 

—Rugby Chapeu- 







% 













Contents 


Foreword. 

PAGE 

11 

A Victorious Life. 

. 13 

Education. 

25 

Society and Reform .... 

. 125 

Nature . 

163 

The Faith. 

. 197 

The Church and the Ministry 

231 

Missions. 

. 275 


Note. —These essays and excerpts are printed in the form ot 
brief paragraphs, many of them having been so contributed to 
the columns of Our Church Eife. Other selections are from 
The Advance and from various addresses. 




One cannot be a good citizen of Wisconsin without 
being a good citizen of America. One cannot be a 
good citizen of America without being a good citizen 
of the Commonwealth of all nations. One cannot be 
a good citizen of the world Commonwealth without 
being a good citizen of the Universal Kingdom of 
God’s moral order. Wisconsin citizenship , magnifi¬ 
cent lesson to be learned ! 


From an Address. 






jforewotb 


Only The Master might say: It is finished. 
To all others there has seemed to be at best 
merely a verging towards completeness. He 
whose words are gathered in this volume lived 
ever under the strenuous sense of incessant 
conflict. These paragraphs are the war-rec¬ 
ord of a Christian citizen who felt the pres¬ 
sure of impending issues, saw in vision the 
methods of strategic procedure, and called to 
the men of his time to be wise and true. Of 
such a soul such words, earnest and incom¬ 
plete, with the swiftness and solemnity of the 
reveille about them, are the best biography. 
They have been gathered that their ministry 
of inspiration might be perpetuated and that 
they might reproduce the figure of him whom 
we loved. 


ii 








H IPtctortous life 


JOSEPH COEEIE, D. D. 


IN MEMORIAM 


JOSHUA JAMES BEAISDEEIv 
February 8, 1827 
October 10, 1896 


* 


0 IDictorious iLtfe 


What, my brethren, does all this mean? 
The royal head, Reason’s strong throne, con¬ 
spicuous in our assemblies, when the hearts 
of the people were deeply stirred, laid low on 
the narrow bed, yet wearing a halo as if the 
broad day of thought were still shining with¬ 
in. 

The noble countenance, where strength was 
ever melting into tenderness, no longer lifted 
up a guiding star in times of perplexity and 
sorrow, yet lying there radiant in the light of 
a brighter day than ours. 

These lips, so accustomed to be moved by 
streams of scholarly eloquence or character¬ 
building instruction, or inspired prayer which 
gave wings to our hearts and set us awed and 
melted in the presence of Him whose “name 
is above every name,” now motionless, but elo¬ 
quent still. 


15 



Uisions of a Citizen 


The great heart so responsive to the Mas¬ 
ter’s voice or the gentlest call of human need 
or danger, now unmoved even by love’s tears 
and groans, yes, even making them answer 
with a smile. 

Beloit College, with bowed head and 
disheveled hair, sobbing out her irrepressible 
grief while he who had given her his heart, 
his life, lies in her presence in deep content¬ 
ment as if all her future were secure. 

What does this occasion mean? Is it a 
time for tears? Should sorrow rule the hour? 
O, is this all a dream in which dissimilar 
things are joined and contradictions blend? 

Is this disaster, defeat? Or is it victory? 

The answer is this: We are looking on the 
reverse side of this occasion; there is an¬ 
other side, the obverse side, the face and front 
of this occasion. 

We turn from the side which presents the 
transient, the side beclouded and dreary, in 
which moaning winds toss the fallen leaves 
and leaden clouds shut out the sun, and the 
sob of the storm is heard. We turn to the 
side of enduring realities to look on the 
march of an heroic life and to listen to the 
music of coronation. 

16 


H Uictorious Cite 


Thirty-seven years of enthusiastic work in 
unfolding the capabilities of young men and 
giving direction to the aim and issue of their 
lives; broadening out their being, setting sub¬ 
lime ideals before them, grounding them in 
eternal truth, girding them with the courage 
of noble purpose, and bringing them under 
the solar rays of the Spirit of Christ apart from 
which no human life can come to its best, its 
largest possibilities, its richest fruitage—is 
that an occasion for dirges and funeral drap¬ 
ery and sadness of face? Nay! but for 
psalms of thanksgiving and shouts of triumph! 

To have practically exalted the conception 
of Home Missionary work in Wisconsin and 
set it more securely in its legitimate place not 
among sectarian enterprises, but among the 
agencies which patriotic men and women must 
use to make Wisconsin the abode of a more 
beneficent civilization; the guardian of homes 
in which God is honored, and patriotism and 
intelligence hold sway; homes which shall be 
the nation’s fortress in times of peril and her 
crown of glory at all times;—to have given a 
more practical embodiment to these high aims 
and to have aroused many of his fellow-citi¬ 
zens to a holier zeal in this work, should be 
met to-day with a paean of victory. 

17 


Uisions of a Citizen 


Who shall tell how much of a blessing is 
planted in the earth when an upright man, 
made upright by the Spirit of the divine Re¬ 
deemer, walks our streets, though in the plain 
garb of a humble citizen, greets us in the 
morning, sits in our assemblies and councils, 
manifesting “the mind that was in Christ.” 
And if he adds to his uprightness the sympa¬ 
thy which soothes and heals, if he is the lover 
of children, the friend of the wayward and the 
prisoner, everybody’s brother, shall we weep 
over his sojourn among us? Shall we look 
only at the fact that he has passed away? Shall 
we not rather rejoice that he has ever been, 
that we have known him, that he can never be 
taken from our memory and our love? 

It was not an occasion of lamentation when 
our brother, more than thirty years ago, when 
you who belong to the Grand Army were in 
the prime of young manhood, some of you 
from the college and others from the com¬ 
munity, went forth at the call of his country 
amid the privations, the hardships, the dan¬ 
gers of war, that this republic might not be 
hurled from its sphere in the galaxy of na¬ 
tions, that the clank of the slave’s chains might 
be heard no more on this broad continent, 

18 


n Uictorious Cite 


and that life might grow sweeter to millions 
of his fellow beings. That he did his part well 
and bravely, that the great end for which they 
went forth was realized, that the blessings of 
a redeemed country are ours to-day, these all 
are reasons for gladness of heart. Thank God 
for the brave men, whether in the ranks or 
high in command, or in the chaplaincy, 
whether living to-day or lying in unknown 
graves, who stood so heroically by their coun¬ 
try and caused it to stand in the hour of peril. 
That our brother so practically identified him¬ 
self with the nation’s defense and the nation’s 
regeneration, is something for which we ren¬ 
der him and his fellow-soldiers our thanks to¬ 
day. 

For six years it was his privilege to be a 
pastor in a great city, giving the gospel of 
Jesus Christ to inquiring minds and open 
hearts. Going to the poor, the sorrowing, 
with a hallowed ministry of consolation and a 
compassion almost divine, blessing the chil¬ 
dren, cheering hearts, a staff to the aged, 
brightening* the home and making death more 
easy, surely there was nothing to weep over 
in all this but rather occasion for everlasting 
thanksgiving. 


19 


Uisions of a Citizen 


Defeat is sometimes more honorable than 
victory. It is better “to lose with God ’ than 
to win with iniquity. 

It was nobler for our brother to stand with 
the minority against a ravager of American 
homes as cruel as “the throned assassin” of 
the east, than to be victorious through indif¬ 
ference to the most appalling danger in our 
civilization. Honor to those who do not count 
the number among* whom they stand, but be¬ 
lieving that Christ is in this world to make it 
his own, give themselves to those great inter¬ 
ests of mankind which still are trampled in 
the dust. 

Our honored brother and this dear sister— 
the touch of whose gentle hand was on all his 
life—together, organized a Christian home, 
more than forty years ago, within the sphere 
of which they sought to establish that rever¬ 
ent godliness, that Christian concord, that mu¬ 
tual helpfulness, that love and peace and 
sweetness which dwell in enduring fulness in 
the Father’s House. To have maintained this 
bright illuminated spot in this world for so 
many years and then to leave it perfumed with 
a memory which puts it among the things 
that are holy, that was something for which 

20 


fl UictorioM$ Life 


to praise the Lord. That was an incentive to 
us to lift higher the standard of the Wisconsin 
home. 

There are things which cannot be shaken, 
values which never depreciate, gold which is 
current in all worlds. And in the life of Pro¬ 
fessor Blaisdell the world is richer in such 
wealth—richer by hundreds of quickened and 
ennobled lives, lives which will yield their 
fruit and transmit their type of character down 
the centuries. Losses may swallow up the 
gains that are temporal. A blight may fall 
on our financial system. A tornado of disas¬ 
ter may sweep over our commerce, but the 
work which he has done in the molding of 
character, the development of worthier man¬ 
hood, in his beneficent touch upon the life of 
the State, in the general influence of his life— 
so marked by strength and refinement, so ripe 
in scholarship, so earnest for the advancement 
of a vital and heroic type of Christianity, so 
rich in love—that is a work, the results of 
which belong among the eternal realities. 
That is a victory which propagates victory. 

But you will remind me that all these high 
attainments, this noble service, was dearly 
bought. The gains were great, but so costly. 

21 


Qi$ion$ of a Citizen 


I do not deny the cost, all noble lives are 
heroic, sacrificial. His work broke him down. 
The gains were costly. But the cost, the pain, 
the loss, are temporal. I am looking on the 
side which is stamped with immortality. Vic¬ 
tory presupposes the carnage of the battle¬ 
field. The world’s progress is like the move¬ 
ment of a stupendous juggernaut, the rails on 
which the advance takes place are consecrat¬ 
ed lives, laying themselves in the dust that the 
world may move to higher levels. 

Before you can claim the triumph of East¬ 
er you must pass through the gloom and 
agony of Good Friday. O, my younger 
brothers of Beloit, be sure of this, that all real 
success, all that lies in the line of noble living, 
all that makes heroes of you, will cost you 
dear. We must live for that which is worth 
our life, pouring it out day by day, or laying 
it down at one stroke at the call of duty. 

Still after all you will remind me that he 
hunself is not here. If we could replace him 
in that chair in Middle College, in the dear 
home close by, if we could only set him back 
in this church and community, then this 
would be a day that began in tears and closed 
in shouts of gladness. But Heaven claims 


22 


Ji Uictorious Life 


and holds him. No! It is not so. He is with 
us, still with us in human lives the world 
round; noble lives, made more noble, more 
Christlike, because his life touched them. 
Thanks be to God who gave him the victory 
and left the treasure of his life so largely with 
us. He is here. Here in the college, the 
church, the home, the community. Here in 
these hearts. Here in influence shed on other 
lives. Long, long will it be before all of Pro¬ 
fessor Blaisdell can be gathered into the wait¬ 
ing heavens. 

The question has often come to me: why 
is the sun at his setting attended by richer 
splendors than at his rising? To-day—this 
glorious October day—the answer comes to 
us: “Let not him who girdeth on the sword 
boast himself as he who layeth it off.” The 
splendors of sunset are surpassing because 
they proclaim not the onset of battle but the 
conflict over, and the victory won. The 
beneficence and blessing of the day swallow up 
the intimations of approaching night. 

We stand in the presence of a sunset. The 
day of a life has come to its close, a life of 
sunlike usefulness and blessing. Should there 
be no unfurling banners? Should the flag be 
at half-mast? Should the vapors which hang 

23 




Ui$ion$ or a Citizen 


about the scene fail to remind us that sunset 
here is always sunrise in other longitudes? 
That it is not possible for such a life to be in 
any world and the flowers not bloom fairer 
and the fruits drink in a richer flavor? 

In the presence of these facts, let us resolve 
that our lives shall mean more than ever, for 
the blessing of mankind, for the honor of that 
name which is above every name; that so far 
as there may be anything of loss in this trans¬ 
fer of a great and luminous life to other hori¬ 
zons, it shall be made good, as God gives us 
ability. 

The life of Professor Blaisdell was a monu¬ 
mental life on the heights of these contiguous 
commonwealths. A pharos on the shores of 
Wisconsin to guide and cheer other lives and 
light them on to victory. For all which we 
would make this an occasion of thanksgiving. 
We are here to recognize the endowment that 
has come to Beloit and to the kingdom of God 
through the life of Professor Blaisdell. We 
are here to celebrate a victorious life. The 
old flag ought not to be at half-mast to-day. 
The dirge does not befit the occasion. Lift 
up the banner. Let the breezes of Wisconsin 
take it and wave it more proudly because 
James J. Blaisdell lived and will forever live. 

24 


i£tmcatton 


When I die I want it said of me 
that he was a man who sought 
to have Christ in everything. 









I 


Of course it is Christian educa- 
Hcing tion we urge—the young people 

brought out from unconscious 
childhood, to the habitual doing 
of all they can in all ways of common and 
uncommon life, to save others and the world 
from wrong and pain, as He did, and under 
His leadership—with a trained intelligence 
which shall make the reasons, methods, ends, 
of doing so luminous to themselves and lum¬ 
inous to others—with all the wealth of great 
human hearts, such as makes Christ so the 
object of our love and admiration, our Divine 
brother man. A new generation of splendid 
souls, militant in their citizenship here, tri¬ 
umphant in their citizenship hereafter; cap¬ 
able of wrestling with men on earth, and at 

^Professor Blaisdell was for thirty-seven years a teacher in 
Beloit College, first in the department of Rhetoric and English 
Literature and later in the chair of Mental and Moral Philo¬ 
sophy. He served also for a considerable time as Superin¬ 
tendent of Schools and for two years he edited an Educational 
Department for Our Church Life. From these points of 
vantage he spoke frequently and urgently upon educational 
themes. 


27 



Visions of a Citizen 


length of being citizens of the Kingdom of 
the Victory. Boys! Girls! this is what we are 
after you for. This is what we mean by your 
being educated. We don’t think any person 
is truly educated until he is good, wise, noble 
like Christ. This is what a Christian school 


means. 


28 


II 


We have to keep it sharp in our 
ClK TSSUC conception that the schools for 
which we stand are the distinctive¬ 
ly Christian schools. We feel 
deep interest in all the institutions in which 
the commonwealth undertakes to educate its 
youth, and first of all our interest is that they 
become Christian as soon as possible, for it 
is our judgment that these only are availing 
for proper education. How many and what 
of them are such it is for them to say. We 
care not for names much, save as they repre¬ 
sent or promote realities, but a Christian 
school is just as different from one which is 
not Christian as a man who is a Christian is 
from one who is not. The disposition of our 
Christian schools is to force this issue. Beloit 
is nothing. Ripon is nothing. Downer is 
nothing. But the education of youth should 
be Christian, and we intend to make Chris¬ 
tian education so manifestly the true educa¬ 
tion as that in the end all our schools will be- 


29 


Visions of a gitizen 

come Christian, as we are sure they ultimately 
will be. The non-Christian school is a relic of 
the heathenism which became antiquated 
when Christ became the world’s teacher. This 
is the imperial educational issue of the hour. 

30 



Ill 


The new year is opening with 
the Dawn large increase of movement to¬ 
wards the higher education. I 
shall not easily be convinced that 
it is not due in part to the Christian Endeavor 
uprising, making young people alive to the 
higher way of living in the truth; for just 
so much as you make life mean more, you 
wake mind up to the problem of becoming 
greatly intelligent in order to be greatly good. 
The day of stupid goodness is past. May we 
not think, too, that our whole people are in 
some considerable measure graduating out of 
the vulgar stage of mere animal living into 
the higher stage of living as immortal spirits 
should? He would be superficial who would 
lay the improvement to the prospective im¬ 
provement of industrial conditions. Perhaps 
men are learning that in as much as thieves 
do break through and steal, it is on the whole 
better to lay up treasures which cannot be 
stolen, though I do not think that the growths 


3i 


Uisions of a Citizen 


of the new centuries are mainly because of the 
disappointments and disgusts of the old. It 
is certainly true that mind is coming to recog¬ 
nize its true supremacy as being that for which 
all other things exist and the field of supreme¬ 
ly assiduous tillage. The Chautauqua call, 
heard throughout all the land, has been the 
breath of life to the spiritual part of old and 
young. And yet, need we ask the special rea¬ 
sons why? We are going toward the morn¬ 
ing, and the land is feeling the touch of the 
fingers of the dawn. Shadows are still, alas, 
everywhere, but we are going towards the 
morning. Man is awaking. 


IV 


Amid all that is so hopeful in our 

Che • . 

schools, the real attitude of mind 

teacher $ , , , , , . 

the teacher is expected to breed in 

the youth is of the most urgent 
question, perhaps also most indistinctly an¬ 
swered by us. If learning and the habit of 
acquiring it for himself is to be the pupil’s in¬ 
heritance from his teacher, learning is not 
in the true school lodged in the mind of the 
pupil as an apprehension of the intellect. 
Truth is only the method of a divine proced¬ 
ure in working the problem of good. It is, of 
whatever kind, only God’s loving purpose. 
Learning is falling intelligently into the move¬ 
ment of the Divine purpose. To study geo¬ 
logy is to enter the work of world-building so 
as to go on completing it in all the sequel of 
its procedure in the economical life of society, 
and all remoter inferences of service. The 
cable car does not simply know the movement 
of the endless cable which lies hidden beneath 
its track; it enters itself into the momentum 

33 


Uisions of a Citizen 


and realizes the whole connected system of 
working in the commoding of human life 
through busy trafficking cities. The business 
of the teacher is to help the pupil connect him¬ 
self with God’s movement in building the 
world into order toward specific human good, 
in nations, commonwealths, cities, homes, 
bodies, souls. “I must write a pamphlet or I 
shall burst,” was one of Arnold’s sayings. I 
must yoke this young mind to this divine pro¬ 
cedure in astronomy, physics, linguistic law, 
logic, ethical principle, or I shall burst. Here 
are your great teachers, and there are no oth¬ 
ers. This is the formula for making Socrates. 

34 


V 


I speak of reverence as the qual- 
CbC Quality ity of the man of science; for after 
Of Reverence a ]^ this law,which Logic proclaims 
as put by reason upon thought, 
has its seat in that absolute sphere where all 
venerableness abides, a kind of awful govern¬ 
ment of intelligences which are liable to err. 
There is one law for mind’s underlying pur¬ 
poses which constitute character, the law of 
Right, to break which constitutes sin. There 
is another law for the sensibilities, the law of 
Beauty, to be out of conformity with which is 
ugliness. There is another law of the intel¬ 
lect, the law of Truth, to break which is in¬ 
tellectual confusion and wandering as of night. 
This is the imperial legislation of the Absolute 
Reason in the Universe, its ancient and ven¬ 
erable code, abiding in which is virtue in the 
will, beautifulness in the sensibilities and 
truthfulness in science. Under this aboriginal 
government over thought, we, as men of sci¬ 
ence, do our responsible work for our own 

35 


Uisions of a Citizen 


yearning and that of mankind. It becomes us 
indeed to be deeply reverent. 

Logic is the science of the fealty of thought 
to reason. I think of it as being a religious 
science. The teacher of it—the true teacher 
6f it—is one of the prophets. The student, 
constructing his science under the guidance 
of its teaching, will, if he intelligently appre¬ 
hend its meaning, go to his service with deep 
sense of the sacredness of his calling, with 
tremulous joy that he is permitted to minister 
with his hand in the hand of so blessed a lead¬ 
er. Logic affirms the supremacy of Absolute 
Reason, and true Science accepts obediently 
its leadership as of a Divine voice. Under 
this leadership of Logic, prophet of a higher 
law, Science goes in and out, ministering in 
sacred things to men. 

36 


VI 



I saw two men standing on the 
sidewalk in earnest conversation, 
one of them with the point of his 
right forefinger on the point of his 


left and saying to his companion: “Now, 
this is the point.” It was all I heard and I am 
not sure of his meaning, but I presume it was: 


“Now look at the thing from this point of view 


and you will see it as it is.” That is, he was 
trying to bring the other man to the right way 
of looking at the question they were consid¬ 
ering. I wished that the man could be em¬ 
ployed to spend the rest of his life in going 
around among the people of Wisconsin to 
bring us all to look at all the multitudes of 
things we have to consider from the point of 
the real principle that determines how they 
are and how they are not. I found a student 
the other day with his face flushed because 
the Spherical Geometry he was studying was 
utterly incomprehensible to him and there was 
not any other way for him, as he insisted, but 


37 


Ui$iott$ of a Citizen 


to go home to his mother and spend his re¬ 
maining days on the farm. I suggested to him 
that he employ a competent person to find out 
the actual relation of his mental whereabouts 
to the troublesome Geometry and bring him 
around to the point of view from which the 
dimensions of spherical bodies and their 
measurement should be looked at. He tried 
the experiment and soon he came around with 
his face cleared and radiant. Almost the main 
intellectual virtue of the good teacher is that 
he be able to take the mind of another along 
with his'own to the supreme point of view. 
For the pupil it is more than half the battle. 
If I were instructing a child at my knee to 
read the word “baker,” I would put it rightly 
before his thought so that he should under¬ 
stand what a word is. It is as important as it 
is to get the point of perspective of an oil 
painting, or to attack an army at exactly the 
point where the entrance of all its lines of vin¬ 
cibleness lies open. Here is the true teach¬ 
er, for classifying things, for giving them wide 
meaning, for making them mighty for impulse 
and for empowerment. 

38 


education 


Let us classify. First. There is the no¬ 
perspective teacher. He can perhaps see one 
fact, but he can see only one at a time. He 
looks first at one thing; then he looks at an¬ 
other; then another; then another. Things 
are in a row to him, as a row of bricks in a 
pile, as a pile of stones, all projected upon a 
flat background, like an Assyrian sculptured 
slab, without being subordinated under any 
principle; dead and flat as dead leaves on the 
ground in November. Of course such teach¬ 
ers do not teach truth, for truth to every 
minutest fibre is a living organic whole. They 
teach only the brown dead leaves of the tree 
of knowledge which have fallen from it. Let 
us teachers be sure to get a perspective of 
what we teach—everything we teach. 

Second. There is the false-perspective 
teacher. It is sometimes worse to have things 
brought to our minds at a wrong point of view 
than to have them brought at no common 
point of view at all. The one is no doubt 
more likely to interest and serve as motive, 
but it is creating interest in what is not a 
truth, every further conclusion to which it 
leads will be only further astray, and whatever 

39 


Visions of 4 Citizen 


action we respond to it, it will be only a jour¬ 
ney which will have to be traveled over again 
to get back to the wise way. Hume’s History 
of England is a very interesting book, but it 
took a century to get the truth into the place 
of its error, and the roadways it marked out 
for the men who read it had to be washed out 
by bloody wars. It is true, that some things 
can be taught from a wrong point of view with 
less serious results than others, and so many 
teachers think it a light matter. But there is 
nothing—absolutely—which had not better be 
taught from a right point of view and nothing 
which may not be taught with a carelessness 
of the point of view which leaves the mind of 
the learner worse off than if the thing had 
never been taught him at all. Put the micro¬ 
scope to anything and the microscope will dis¬ 
close threads of organizing tissue which bind 
the thing is a system as much one as the 
eye is one which explains every nerve within 
its wonderful structure. Any fact of history 
may be made a falsehood by its being set out 
of its true perspective. My dear old college 
president got our minds utterly askew to the 
magnificence of things by teaching us Natu- 

40 


education 


ral Theology from the point of view that the 
fossils in the mountains were created by sharp 
act of omnipotence just as they are in the very 
places where we find them. He was far wiser 
in his day than a geologist who teaches of the 
fossil-filled mountains without any reference 
to the mountains as being ordered so as to be 
the floor of man’s home in the process of civ¬ 
ilization. This is not teaching truth any more 
than chiseling the Venus di Medici is making 
Venus, queen of the sacredness of womanly 
beauty. 

Third. There are teachers who for one rea¬ 
son or another abide at low points of view. I 
was once looking from the high window of 
the Cathedral of Milan out over the plain of 
Lombardy out to the sickle of the upper Alps, 
while the city of Milan lay in the baptism of 
splendid history at my feet. A family of seven 
were near me. Gazing silent out upon the 
scene beneath at length the feelings of the 
father, too much for him, broke forth in the 
words: “This is a mighty smart chance of a 
town.” It was indeed, and the man was right, 
but he might have looked at the scene from a 
higher point of view. When we climbed 

4i 


Uisions or a Citizen 


mountains in boyhood we found that the first 
shoulder let us have some slight view of the 
region we longed to behold; one after another 
mere and more. But we kept our faces stead¬ 
fast to the front that we might have the bless¬ 
edness of the downward look from the summit. 
Blessed pupil of blessed teacher who is learn¬ 
ing from that teacher to look at what he learns 
from the higher shoulders of the mount of 
vision! This is to approximate the truth. 
There are no fractions in truth any more than 
in the human body. The whole or nothing. 
“Always learning and never coming to the 
knowledge of the truth.” There are shoul¬ 
ders from which we catch some distorted 
views. The summit is the place to which the 
teacher should take his disciple. 


No teacher stands on that summit with his 
pupil save as he puts into the minutest facts 
of science the personal equation of a God 
solving the problem of a moral purpose. 

42 



education 


If this world is not all confusion, if the stu¬ 
dent can ever be placed by any teacher at a 
point of perspective where his spherical geom¬ 
etry is not at last, in the larger view, incom¬ 
prehensible to him so as to leave his face 
flushed—and so with any science—that teach¬ 
er out of acquaintance with Jesus of Nazareth 
must teach that student his lesson in the 
interpretation it receives from Jesus of Naz¬ 
areth as the revelation of the Divine moral 
purpose of Redemption. There is no summit 
for vision or for imparting vision but Jesus of 
Nazareth. “In Him are hid all the treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge.” The Christian 
teacher is the only teacher of truth. There 
can be no other. 


43 


VII. 


It is pleasing to contemplate the 

Prayer for^ volume of influence proceeding 
Colleges from the Day of Prayer for Col¬ 
leges through the answer of the 
Heavenly Father to the youth who are now 
in school. It will be extending and deepen¬ 
ing in the life of these young people in all the 
future years. What mind has insight enough 
to estimate its greatness? The prayer of 
Christians for the young men and young 
women is, in no mean measure, the means of 
the coming of the Kingdom of God through¬ 
out the earth. 

Meanwhile, with many a pastor, one of the 
most sacred reminiscences, when in later life 
he closes his ministry, will be the gathering 
of his people on the day of prayer for col¬ 
leges, for prayer in behalf of the young people 
at school. The faces of the deep hearted moth¬ 
ers and fathers are suggestive and blessed 
pictures hung in the halls of memory. What¬ 
ever sad things may hang as clouds in its 

44 








education 


retrospect, the evening of a life with such 
blessing realizes what Longfellow perhaps 
means in part: 

“ The stars arise and the night is holy.” 


The Day of Prayer for Colleges originated 
in the deep thoughtfulness of Christian people 
in New England about the body of young 
men gathered in these institutions. The fath¬ 
ers and mothers in the churches had their 
hearts on these young people as destined by 
their qualities and opportunities to be lead¬ 
ers in their generation. In regard to the larg¬ 
er number, it was the expectation of the pa¬ 
rents that they would be ministers of the gos¬ 
pel. Those who sent their sons to college were 
strenuous persons, realizing that the men 
preaching Christ ought to have what the dis¬ 
ciples had at the Pentecost—a thorough bap¬ 
tism of the Divine Spirit during the time when 
their habits of thought and conduct were 

45 



Uisions of a Citizen 


forming. Accordingly a college, at all times 
an object towards which the thoughts of 
Christian people turned, on the day set apart 
for the purpose of prayer for them was won¬ 
derfully in the hearts of devout and praying 
souls. Even far away from New England, I 
well remember, a dear company of such per¬ 
sons, men and women, some of whom were 
parents of sons in college, habitually gathered 
in the prayer room for the deepest-hearted 
meeting of all the year. How wonderful the 
interest, could we look back to the history 
of that praying for young men—among whom 
were many of us—in college during the sec¬ 
ond and third quarters of this century. Say 
what we may, it was one of the most impres¬ 
sive things in the history of the American 
Church. There is no need of looking far for 
a justification of the confidence with which 
the return of this day has been approached. 
If we would know the real explanation of mul¬ 
titudes of consecrated lives over all our coun¬ 
try, we should find it in no small measure in 
the praying circles and closets of the Day of 
Prayer. 


46 


Education 


It is of the utmost importance that, in every 
college and school where young people are 
gathered, the tradition of this day have the 
help in its maintenance of Christians in ob¬ 
serving it everywhere most faithfully. In all 
schools the number of things which occupy 
the attention is multiplying, and in this way 
the emphasis of the day in the regard of the 
young is likely to be more and more lessened 
by competition with other matters. They 
need to have its return made deeply impres¬ 
sive upon them by being made aware that 
Christians—pastors, fathers, mothers, the 
whole church, are at the altar praying for 
them. Let the churches ever sacredly observe 
the day themselves, and send messages per¬ 
taining to it to those within the college circle, 
for no one knows how deeply responsive to the 
impulses which beat upon it from without, the 
school community is. Whenever the young 
people in college shall be sure that the people 
of God without are greatly praying for them 
on the day of prayer, the day of prayer will 
be a solemn time of greatly praying for them¬ 
selves within the college. The Kingdom of 
God waits for the Baptism of the Spirit upon 
the school in answer to prayer. 

47 


Uisions of a Citizen 

We may as well make up our minds now, 
once for all, that prayer on the part of plain, 
sincere friends of God is more prevalent with 
God in determining His procedures than ask¬ 
ing on the part of plain, sincere friends of 
man is with men in determining their proced¬ 
ures. The audience is completely open be¬ 
tween a good man and his heavenly Friend, 
and prayer is a settled law on which the uni¬ 
verse is administered. The world is steadily, 
in the processes of intelligence, notwithstand¬ 
ing all transient challenge of it, settling to this 
conclusion. There is enough evidence in for 
closing the case. As for the adverse testi¬ 
mony, it is wholly in; all has been said that 
can be said on that side. Individuals in the 
speculations of science or for the subterfuges 
of self-gratification will idiotize the truth, 
what has been said over and over again. But 
quietly the law is on the statute book of human 
thought, inexpungable, that the prayer of . 
God’s dutiful subjects has motive influence 
with God. And one of the supreme uses this 
privilege may be put to and is expected to be 
put to and will be put to, if the children of 
God are true to the best things, is in having 

48 


education 


one day, amid all days, of solemn assembling 
and going into closets, to ask the Heavenly 

Father to so order the preparation of young 
people in school that they shall be ready for 

His service in their generation. This is the 
message which the schools—I venture to say 
all of them—send to the churches. 


It is an extremely beautiful thing which the 
villages and cities far and near do when the 
young people of the colleges and the univer¬ 
sity go among them in their representatives 
of the glee club, the banjo club, the baseball 
nine and the football eleven. In the center of 
the throngs which welcome these splendid fel¬ 
lows and accompany them with huzzas and 
all social hospitalities in beautiful homes, I 
trust the Christian people are abundantly 
found. I know how some Christian families 
have planted in college circles traditions of 
their kindness at such times which will live 
long among young men. But there is one 

49 



Uisions of a Citizen 


thing more needful than this very salutary 
friendliness to young men in the morning of 
life’s onset, when they are getting on the har¬ 
ness of war. It is that our villages and cities— 
so many of them as know how—shall be ask¬ 
ing the God who asks young people for war, 
at family altars, in sanctuaries and in closets, 
that He would let His hand be busy in guiding 
His chosen, and shall let the young fellows 
be impressed with the fact that they are so 
asking. It would be still better and more 
beautiful than the shouts and waving of ban¬ 
ners on the diamond or in front of the plat¬ 
form, or than the hospitalities with which they 
welcome to open-hearted homes. Prayer, 
united prayer for the new generation of lead¬ 
ers is, after fighting itself, the supreme office 
of the militant church. This culminates in the 
annual Day of Prayer for Colleges. 


We want the coming generation to be a 
splendid and mighty one, more splendid and 

50 



education 


mighty than the present, far. Great opportu¬ 
nities are waiting for them. Great instru¬ 
ments are ready for their use. Great destinies 
are in their decision. Great onsets of holy 
war are in the campaign. To pastors and to 
churches, the colleges and university, with all 
the schools, send this their appeal. Let the 
habitual practice of prayer among Christians 
for all young people in school begin anew. 
The next Sabbath, in the pulpit, to-day! 

5i 


VIII 


Last Sabbath a clergyman was 

School Bac* asked by the principal of a high 
CftlaureatC school to preach a baccalaureate 
sermon to his graduating class. In 
accordance with the request the clergyman 
talked to the assembly of the school and the 
patrons, in the high-school room, choosing for 
direction to his thought the words: “Fight 
the good fight of faith.” The following were 
the heads of his address: i. The life of one 
in the world is a life of fighting—against evil 
uses of language; against impure, profane and 
unprofitable thoughts; against unwise, un¬ 
kind, ignoble and selfish conduct and action, 
in order to maintain a life of service, for indi¬ 
viduals, for country, for mankind, to carry out 
God’s benignant and saving purposes in the 
orderly government of the world. 2. That 
such a life as this must be sustained by con¬ 
stantly cultivating a sense of divine holiness 
and goodness, as shown in the person, charac¬ 
ter and life of Jesus Christ. It was urged 
that the best and only help to such a life is 

52 



education 


deep and intimate familiarity with Jesus Christ 
as he is described in the four Gospels, and 
therefore that the indispensable book to read 
and reread is this biography of Christ. 
3. That such a fight of faith in Jesus Christ as 
revealing God would inevitably be a good 
life; because fighting in this way was the only 
right thing to do; because such a fight would 
certainly end in victory; because it would 
certainly be a happy and the only truly happy 
life. Not money, not amusement, not self- 
indulgence, not learning, not gratified ambi¬ 
tion, but a clean, lofty life, consecrated and 
serviceable to the best uses. The emphasis 
was on the three words: fight, faith, good 
fight. 


That was the most reasonable of all things 
for that high school principal to provide for 
his pupils at the close of a school year, when 
some of them were to begin in the active citi- 

53 



Uisiotts of a Citizen 


zenship of the world. What did those young 
people need to have said to them if not such 
things as that? We all of us remember words 
said to us, in certain critical turning points, 
which have always stayed by us. Words must 
take their opportunities, and when a young 
person is going out from school with what 
preparation he has had given him, and is real¬ 
ly confronted at that sensitive moment with 
the question how he expected to use that 
preparation, words are not wasted. I ask if 
it be not absolutely criminal to fail to see to 
it that such things be said.—Service. Fight 
for it. In faith in the unseen realities. For 
it shall be a good fight. That teacher was a 
wise shepherd of that blessed flock he had 
charge of, and the man who had the privilege 
of saying these things to them was at the 
Waterloo noon of their lives, perhaps. 


This is certainly as it should be. For three 
reasons. First, because there is a very strong 

54 



Education 


tendency in these times on the part of the 
youth to a life of self-indulgence. It is not 
possible to compare the present with the past 
with any great certainty of being just, but 
there are indications that the young people 
who are coming out of our schools are mak¬ 
ing great calculations on living pleasantly and 
are leaving life to the drift of inclinations. I 
am sure that there are multitudes of young 
school people in whose minds the thought has 
not yet gotten any strong hold that resist¬ 
ance to inclination ought to be and must be 
continually practiced. How many are really 
waging war against wrong, impure, profane, 
unkind and self-gratifying ways of talking? 
How many are having any real fight with 
themselves to expel impure and hateful 
thoughts, so as to have a clean soul? There 
are a great many boys and girls who have not 
begun or thought of beginning a fight in 
themselves for a life of generous service for 
others in freedom from the habit of living for 
self. Now these things ought to be told them, 
and the young people’s teacher is the person 
to do it, as his very first and most important 
office, and to let them know that it is intimate 


Uisions of a Citizen 


familiarity with Christ and the way He lived 
that will help them best and will really only 
help them, to overcome in the fight. It must 
be a fight in full view of God’s love as shown 
to men in Jesus—Jesus who lived a life of sac¬ 
rifice for them. 


Secondly, this is an age when material in¬ 
terests are clamoring for the attention of the 
young. The influence which confronts these 
young people, as they come out into the 
world, to self-gratification is very strong. They 
see people straining every energy to be rich. 
The opportunities and invitations towards 
sensual pleasures are fascinating and absorb¬ 
ing. Everything that is noisy flaunts itself 
in their faces, so that they easily may be out 
of hearing of anything which would induce 
them to such a life as they ought to live. They 
must be told of these higher things. The 
teacher ought to see to it—that the true life 

56 



education 


and the false life are set over against each 
other. What is a teacher for but to be a 
shepherd of these young souls? 


Another reason is the great interests to be 
guarded. This is coming to be an age of seri¬ 
ous apprehensions. It is no secret now that 
the interests of human society are in great 
danger. Men are beginning to understand, 
what some have been saying from the begin¬ 
ning, that it avails little for the ultimate secur¬ 
ity of human welfare to have men educated 
unless they are educated to self-control and to 
subjection to the laws which emanate from 
Heaven. The eternal statutes are the funda¬ 
mental law of states. 


57 



IX 


n Word 
with tbc 
mothers 

kins on 


What is a college? I have never 
heard any other definition so good 
as the often quoted one of Mr. 
Garfield: “A log with Mark Hop- 
one end, a young—woman on 
the other.” This is the way, you know, 
colleges began. Some earnest scholars were 
studying together—so they called them fel¬ 
lows—and they took some boys or young men 
into their charge, to make earnest scholars of 
them. So Mary Lyon took some young wo¬ 
men at Mt. Holyoke, Thomas Arnold some 
young men at Laleham and Rugby. Some¬ 
times some young women and some young 
men get on the other end of the log together. 
For some reason they usually like this better. 
And there they are, under this blessed influ¬ 
ence, stimulating each other, resisting each 
other, persuading each other, modifying each 
other, giving each other his measurement of 
himself and all the time brooded over by that 
great soul with whom they are confronted. I 

58 


education 


know all teachers are not as mighty as Hop¬ 
kins and Arnold and Mary Lyon; but some 
are, and there are many of kindred power 
and quality. I do not ask you to send your 
daughters where there are not such magnifi¬ 
cently endowed Christian personalities. I 
would not have you do it. But where they 
are, send them there, mothers. Such per¬ 
sons can do better for them than you can— 
better than the Lyceum or the Chautauqua 
Club or the Dante Club or the Browning 
Club, or than any private teacher. Send 
them in prayer; ask the Divine Spirit to brood 
over them, and send them. There is no 
place so safe for young people as a Chris¬ 
tian college. 


Besides, mothers, your daughters have too 
many things at home to divert their attention. 
You wish them to see your friends, for you 
are proud of them. You wish them to play 

59 



Uisions of a Citizen 


to your friends. You send them on social 
errands. You must have them help you some, 
as they ought to if they are at home. You 
pet them. They cannot be rid of social en¬ 
gagements and entanglements. This party, 
that party, this church sociable, that evening 
call. And never in this way can they have 
trained minds, for that takes long, arduous, 
steady and concentrated work, patiently done 
day by day, under the help and watch of the 
most thorough teachers. I am afraid you do 
not realize what it means to be mentally pre¬ 
pared to be what you aspire to have your 
daughters be, in this new generation of 
women. It certainly means the very best 
schooling, and very likely it will cost sacrifice 
on your part. I sometimes think that this is 
the means by which mothers do their best 
work—sacrifice. It was a mother who was 
last at the cross. Mothers have a habit of 
being there. 

And, besides, the sheltering and guiding of 
mother and father are the choicest of young 
life’s blessings; but there comes a time when 
the young must learn to judge for themselves, 

60 


Education 


to trust themselves in judging and stand 
shoulder to shoulder with their peers, out in 
the open, in the front rank of the world's 
acting and thinking. Happy the daughter 
who has a mother wise enough to unclasp her 
arms at that moment; and calling to her help 
and her daughter’s the resources of the Divine 
Spirit, send the daughter forth. “Go my 
daughter, and the God of the Covenant be 
with thee.” How many a mother has done 
this, to her heart’s after joy! How many 
daughters have been sent with streaming tears 
to Mary Lyon, to Mary Mortimer, to Emma 
Millard, to Ripon, to Northfield, to Downer 
College, and the mothers have welcomed 
them back home at length transfigured into 
a womanhood before which their own woman¬ 
hood stood awed and their fears were re¬ 
proved and silenced! No. Home has, of its 
Author, its centripetal movements, but it has 
of Him, its centrifugal movements also. There 
comes a time, when, as the son, so the daugh¬ 
ter, long before marriage, says as by a Divine 
leading, “My heart hears a call from the great 
world! Be thou ready! I have here no abid- 

61 


Uisions of a Citizen 

ing place. Hinder me not. I must go hence.” 
To be responsive to that voice is one of the 
highest endowments of motherhood and 
fatherhood. 

62 


X 


father’s 

tetters 


A friend told me the other day 
that at a certain school for young 
women it was quite a considerable 
complaint among the pupils that 
their fathers did not write to them—that they 
almost never wrote to them. This seems to 
be a report of what is very generally true. 
The mothers do not appear to be much at 
fault. “I hear from my mother every week” 
is a common thing to hear. “And how often 
do you write to her?” “Once a week,” is the 
reply. Occasionally, “Every day.” I knew 
a young fellow who wrote to his mother every 
day through his whole college course of four 
years at Beloit. But the fathers write seldom, 
very seldom. They are “too busy.” Now 
every teacher who knows the inner life of his 
pupils—and no other is properly a teacher, 
knows that, like the under current of Gibral¬ 
tar, these influences from home mightily de¬ 
termine what is the outcome of school life. 
The mother, the sister, by what they are and 

63 


Ui$ion$ of i Citizen 

by what words they send, hold, by the deeper 
anchorage of the heart, the life that is out in 
the edge of storms. But every teacher will 
say that the father is needed. It is not enough 
to send a check when the boy’s or girl’s ex¬ 
chequer is low. If the mother is the angel of 
the house, the father is, or ought to be, the 
hero. One young man, now well on towards 
seventy, knows that a few words from his 
father have kept him in the way of virtuous 
endeavor, as by the grip of a beneficent des¬ 
tiny. And this is what fathers are for. Out 
in the thick of the fight, which is to the young 
the world where, after all, their thoughts 
dwell, the fathers speak with strangely effec¬ 
tive voices. God has appointed it in the fam¬ 
ily constitution that it should be so. Hector 
might as well be out of the field before the be¬ 
leaguered gates of Troy as a father out of the 
inner fight of a college boy with the forces of 
darkness which beleaguer him. A word from 
a noble father, thoroughly sympathetic with 
young life, holding in the intelligence of his 
child the even scales of wisdom between what 
is right in this thing and that, and what is 
wrong, will, ten to one, turn the tide of bat- 

64 


Education 


tie. I say “noble father,” and of course no 
father should be otherwise than noble. Fath¬ 
er, do not let your son or daughter report that 
you do not write to him. The labor may be 
arduous, but the prize is great. I suspect the 
children might be content with a little less 
money, even, for the sake of having a little 
more father. This would be a good letter for 
you to send: “Joe, dear fellow: Your mother 
says you are getting on nicely in college work. 
That is right. Only don’t think too much of 
ball-playing and league games. Don’t spend 
too much time without something to do. Don’t 
make too much of fraternity society. Don’t 
have too much ‘amusement.’ Beware of the 
girls—boys. Work hard; study like a tiger. 
Be the noblest and best of men. Remember 
who the Pattern and the Helper is. Dear fel¬ 
low! And when you get through the scrim¬ 
mage—well, we’ll see what we can do for you. 
At any rate, we’ll give you a good handshake 
all around, and be thankful that we have such 
a boy—girl. Father.” 


65 


XI 


There are two statues in bronze 
Horace on the narrow enclosed lawn in 
front of the Massachusetts State 
House in Boston. They are very 
imposing objects, in more than life size, ob¬ 
servable on the high grassy terrace to any one 
who passes by the majestic building on Bea¬ 
con St. hill at the upper corner of Boston 
Common. One of these figures is that of the 
American Statesman, Daniel Webster, inter¬ 
preter and defender of the Constitution of our 
Country. The other, a magnificent sitting 
figure, in the garb and thoughtful mien of the 
scholar, is that of Horace Mann, father of 
the American Common School. I presume 
every one of my young readers would feel a 
great thrill of admiration if he should stand 
in front of the Webster statue with his young 
cheek pressed against the iron fence, as I 
used to do. He would think of the imperial 
magnificence with which Webster met the on¬ 
set of his defiant southern antagonist and for¬ 
ever silenced secession as an argument, so 

• 66 


Education 


that it became only a passionate prejudice. 
He would dream, as the young are apt to 
dream, of his own future, and of the possi¬ 
bility that he himself, now young, may have 
by and by something of that mastery of mind. 
The fourth day of this present month of May 
was the anniversary of the birth of Horace 
Mann, and some of us have wondered wheth¬ 
er the debt we owe to him is not quite as 
great as that we owe to Mr. Webster. I do 
not mean that there were not district schools 
before the time of Horace Mann. Oh, who 
of us, who are upwards of fifty, do not re¬ 
member the school houses where in winter 
and summer we boys and girls studied and 
didn’t study, and played some mischievous 
tricks and fell in love with each other and 
were late at school and got * * , long 

before the schools were organized into a sys¬ 
tem which extended over the state. But in 
1850, Mr. Mann, who had been studying 
deeply the matter and had concluded that the 
schools of each district in the several towns 
should be brought into more orderly system 
under the authority of the commonwealth, 
called together a large number of men to New 

67 


Oi$ion$ or a Citizen 

York for conference. It resulted soon in the 
Common School System of Massachusetts, 
which has been the pride and blessing of that 
state and an example throughout all the states 
of the Union. It is well that in not a few cities 
the day of his birth was commemorated. He 
was a great benefactor, for the common 
school, as it was projected by him, is now be¬ 
come an established system in all the civilized 
nations of the world. If they had not learned 
it from us—for these great movements which 
are so rapidly developed over the globe are 
epidemic rather than contagious—it has been 
recommended among them by what it has 
done for us. It would not be amiss if in every 
common school house in the civilized world 
there should be a portrait of Horace Mann 
hanging, and teachers should often make 
mention of his name, so that in no coming 
generation his memory should be lost. 

68 


XII 


Christianity 
and State 
Education 


This letter I found in my portfolio: 
“As Congregationalists we are in¬ 
terested in our denominational 
schools. Of course you want us 
interested in our State University. 
Is it possible for us to increase the Christian 
influences brought to bear on students there? 
Would it be possible to establish dormitories 
there under Christian supervision, or, say 
some manner of denominational houses, in 
which the influence of strong Christian men 
might be brought to bear on the students? 
I have heard suggestions of that sort 
broached. 

Yours sincerely, 


We have. Where instruction is not reli¬ 
giously neutral there will be such dormitories; 
where it is, and young men and young women 
seek such instruction, they are needed and 
should be, if possible in such circumstances, 
supplied and maintained. If, however, the 

69 



Uisions of a Citizen 


question is an inquiry whether a state univer¬ 
sity so furnished with dormitories and houses 
may perhaps be our one or main rallying 
point of effort in behalf of higher education, 
of course dormitories and houses are not the 
Gibraltar of struggle for Christian education. 
The class-room is the vital thing. If the class¬ 
rooms of a state university beget, through the 
splendid Christian personality of its teach¬ 
ers, a mental training of will, sentiment and 
intelligence, in the interest of Christian living 
in whatever calling, and a furniture of truth 
which is Christian in its point of view, its ho¬ 
rizon and its subordination to the higher uses, 
so far, and so far only, true education has what 
it can never cease to require as true educa¬ 
tion, and dormitories and houses will take 
care of themselves. The question comes, of 
the possibility of such a university at present, 
under state control and with existing legal re¬ 
strictions. With all strength of desire I wish 
we might have such a one, rejoicing with all 
honor in so much as we have, and it is the 
vision of the future by which we are daily 
animated in our work, that we shall some 
day have it fully, restrictions abrogated or be- 

70 


education 


come a dead letter. But then comes the ques¬ 
tion between the large and multitudinous 
school and the smaller and less frequented 
one: and the convictions of thoughtful men 
and women are steadily surrendering to the 
overwhelming reasons in favor of the latter, 
as allowing far better the moral interplay be¬ 
tween the one teacher and the one pupil. 
Then comes the question of a centralized mo¬ 
nopoly in education, even if it were Chris¬ 
tian. No. It will inevitably slip its Chris¬ 
tianity and become formal; it will become a 
mechanism and domineer as did the univer¬ 
sity of France, and not a freely acting or¬ 
ganism allowing the influence of local color¬ 
ing and genius, free to the better nascent in¬ 
stincts which have their first assertion in the 
body of society and not in its committed cen¬ 
ters; its call to the young will be too remote 
to reach so large a number of them as will 
the colleges nearer at hand, to which familiar 
paths lead, and where well-known teachers 
are established in the affections or the associa¬ 
tions of the vicinage, and where convenience 
and the neighborhood of home alike lighten 
expenditure and keep the home-touch warm 

7i 


Visions or a Citizen 


and pervasive and victorious. And running 
through all is the complicating question, 
whether it is a state university, which is one 
thing, or a state college, which is wholly an¬ 
other. The question is a long one, if we care 
to speculate; but I suppose there is no real 
doubt in any mind what the answer will be. 
Local institutions are the order of the day 
and the wisdom of the future. Meanwhile 
it is not best for great agencies, occupied with 
the same general beneficent purpose, to waste 
any energy in conflict with each other. It is 
not well, in such things to indulge publicly 
even in the recreation of a dream. Such 
dreams, at least, had better be kept to them¬ 
selves. One thing is certain, and in it the 
essence of all educational creeds ought by this 
time to harmonize: that Jesus of Nazareth 
was the best educated man and the ideal 
scholar. Oh, that we were all like Him, in 
the schools! If we were only like Him, we 
should be like Him! 


72 


XIII 


In the phraseology of the Science 
Extension of Logic there are two words 

Intension which suggest a line of cleavage 
between two systems of school ad¬ 
ministration: the words extension and inten¬ 
sion. Extension expresses the breadth of a 
range of mental grasp. Intention expresses 
the depth to which mental grasp penetrates. 
I find, as I roam among New England col¬ 
leges in this anniversary period, great shaking 
of heart between the two systems, in which, 
apparently, the educators of the whole coun¬ 
try share. The questioning concerns the 
proper medium to be observed between ex¬ 
tension through many studies and intension 
into a few. It is a favorite principle of late 
years that the range of studies in a school 
curriculum should be very wide, and many 
considerations have been weighing in this di¬ 
rection. New England has been led by such 
considerations to adopt multitudinous lines of 
school studies. To say the least, there is ap¬ 
parently a growing disposition to challenge 
the wisdom of such administration. 

73 


Uisfons of a Citizen 


There is coming to be manifest a difference 
between Eastern and Western colleges in 
some important particulars. It would indeed 
be instructive and perhaps painfully sugges¬ 
tive to observe the extent to which the East 
and West are in more ways than one falling 
into divergent directions. Slavery divided the 
North and the South. Meridians of longitude 
may easily become in turn a line of separa¬ 
tion. It is sometimes quite uncertain whether 
the two portions of the nation are not divid¬ 
ing in more important issues than that of the 
debtor’s and the creditor’s money. A differ¬ 
ence which impresses one, going among the 
colleges, is that between the college viewed 
as a market-place where wares are for sale 
and a college as a moral propaganda. A pro¬ 
fessor in one of the Eastern colleges said to 
me recently: “I do not think that the pro¬ 
fessors here think much about making men. 
They regard it their business to give knowl¬ 
edge.” Which means, I judge, that the col¬ 
lege opens a shop where are offered, com- . 
petitively, certain wares for sale, which as 
many as possible may be induced to come and 
buy and carry away. As one feels the pulse 

74 


education 


of such institutions he encounters little of the 
pastoral spirit. This certainly is not true of 
the larger number of Western colleges. One 
encounters in them far more the disposition 
of moral conquest. Its language is: “We 
are here for the purpose of transmitting char¬ 
acter and generating developed manhood.” 
It would be unfair to place Eastern collegiate 
institutions sharply on one side of this line 
and Western on the other, and yet there cer¬ 
tainly is, by the confession of the Eastern 
themselves, something of this difference. 
What is to be the issue of this difference is a 
matter perhaps of as much concern as how 
is to be decided the question of the medium 
of industrial exchange. One is forced to ask 
himself whether the Eastern commercial at¬ 
titude of education is to prove the ultimate 
one towards which gravitation is inevitable, 
and at which the best must at length arrive, 
or whether the West is the stronghold of the 
early traditions of Christian conceptions of ed¬ 
ucation, whence, before long, the fires of the 
better zeal are to be rekindled on the ancient 
altars. After all that has been said about bar¬ 
barism from the newer fields of the nation 

75 


Qisions of a Citizen 

being the first danger, it is quite questionable 
whether barbarism, or at least deteriorated 
habits in the life of scholarship, are more like¬ 
ly to issue from the newer populations strug¬ 
gling with fresh enthusiasm in new fields with 
new problems, or from the ancient seats where 
life, with all the serious challenge which life 
always encounters, is yet touched with the 
ennui incident to problems long existing and 
measurably finished. There is some reason 
to expect that, with all which is crude in the 
Western fields, there will be found there, after 
all, survivals of the earlier traditions, modified 
no doubt, but nourished and conserved in 
youthful blood, which are some day to be re¬ 
cuperative of the better life of scholarship 
everywhere. If the course of history has been 
a migration out of the East into the West, 
it has yet been ever found, that, though only 
apparent after a period, the West has kept 
with added richness the good it has received 
and that the West has come to the privilege - 
of seeing visions while the East has been 
dreaming dreams. May we not hope that in 
the case in question we shall find no excep¬ 
tion? We distinctly raise our challenge to 

76 


education 


the schools of the East that they make their 
minds hospitable to a future in which they 
shall be disembarrassed of methods and hab¬ 
its into which they have fallen, and shall have 
disclosed to them better methods and habits, 
either preserved out of the past, or newly gen¬ 
erated, by the perhaps incomplete but yet 
older West. The children are often conceited 
and immature, but they are nearer the world’s 
full day than the fathers. New civilizations 
are the heirs of the old. The children are 
older than the fathers. If Christian schools 
are the consummate fruit of human history, 
their perfection will be the gift of the Occident 
to the Orient, until the earlier contributions 
of the Orient, maturer in the later contribu¬ 
tions of the Occident, shall be the high noon 
of the whole round earth in the completed 
kingdom of God. 


77 


XIV 


We measure the period of the year 
Cb* motive by the southing of the sun, the 
Of education growing frosts and the browning 
fields. We might almost as well 
do it by the closing school-houses, the re¬ 
sounding of school oratory and the rustling 
of college diplomas. All over the land, as 
universal as whitening harvests, are the dis¬ 
persing companies ot young men and women 
—boys and girls we will call them—going 
with their heads heavy with vast weights of 
knowledge. It is a wonderful spectacle for 
our contemplation. We might easily find 
from the census reports how many of these 
schools, higher and lower, there are. Their 
number is among the hundreds of thousands. 
Consider the number of them—of the youth, 
the nation is rich with, more beautiful than 
jewels, argosies of splendid possible destinies, 
soon to constitute the nation which is to be 
the head of nations—sixty thousand college 
graduates, they say! See them deploying now 
from their schools, with their freightage ot 
thought and their armament of strength, their 

78 


Education 


eyes full of laughter, but their hearts full of 
far thoughts of what is to come. I wonder 
that the grown citizens of the nation do not 
find their own hearts bursting within them 
with mingled gladness and concern, as they 
make ready to hand on the legacy of the na¬ 
tion to these heirs of the future 

” * of the rose lip and the dew-bright eye.” 

One cannot easily suppress the tumult of 
mind with which he shouts to them in the 
language of the great orator: “Advance then, 
ye future generations, we hail you in your 
coming.” 

But are we not, as Americans, too prone to 
think of this becoming educated as being only 
a means to an end—some ulterior end? Said 
one of my earlier teachers to me in his later 
years: “Are we not educating too many of 
our young people? Would not the most, or 
at least many, of them be more serviceable 
if uneducated?” While I could not help ask¬ 
ing him to suppose that he were one of those 
refused the boon of being educated, his ques¬ 
tion especially seemed to me to imply a false 
conception of what being educated signifies 
as related to living. Does not education mean 

79 


Uisions of a Citizen 


first of all being brought to the very fullness 
of human character and life? Why, an uned¬ 
ucated person is incomplete, not yet a person, 
something less than one. Educate him or you 
leave him somewhere between zero and one, 
as to being a person. He was put forth by 
his Creator into the universe of existence to 
think and know, to feel and love and desire, 
to purpose and plan and have great projects 
of mind. To bring this all out is all there is 
of education. Let your child grow up ig¬ 
norant, purposeless, planless; by so much he 
is a dwarf and not a man or woman. What 
my dear old but mistaken teacher said meant 
this, if it meant what it said: Do we not leave 
too few boys and girls dwarfs? There are few 
parents, unless they are monsters, who would 
stop the physical growth of their children. 
But they do stop their mental growth if they 
do not see to it that these children are in the 
clever company of the boys and girls who are 
now shutting their books for awhile, of whom 
the sweet poet sings: 

“Come forth, Oh ye children of gladness come, 
Where the violets lie may now be your home. ’ ’ 

80 


education 


The question often oppresses me whether 
we should not get more out of education, if we 
said less about what we were going to do 
with our education. “You never will be able 
to do anything unless you have an education,” 
we say to the boy or girl, meaning oftenest, 
“You will never be able to get a living or win 
any of the supposed prizes of life.” Somehow 
that always seems to me to be making being 
a full and complete human being, and not a 
perpetual infant, a secondary thing, a mere 
means to something which is of more value. 
Now to be a human being in full development 
of all high and exercised endowment is the 
best of all things that a human being can at¬ 
tain unto, and the “doing anything” is only 
an incident of that. Would it not be better to 
put it in this way? “Become a complete hu¬ 
man person such as God made you to be, and 
such as your dignity consists in being, be¬ 
cause your dignity lies this way and this is 
what you were made to be, and out of that 
be a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, a wife, 
a mother, kingly among men, queenly among 
women;” instead of saying: “You cannot be 
a lawyer, a physician or any of these things 

81 


Uisions of a Citizen 


unless you become educated, and therefore 
you must become educated That, it seems 
to me, would be putting education in its true 
and sacred primacy instead of making it an 
economical or utililarian procedure. In the 
long run, the way of putting a thing of this 
kind is of great importance. Words grow into 
thoughts and thoughts grow into character 
and conduct. The danger is that young peo¬ 
ple will come to your school in order to be 
able to get a living rather than in order to 
be men and women. Achievement is a pretty 
good sign of education as being one of its 
incidents; it does not constitute its value. Its 
value is that it is becoming a person. A bank 
bill is not a proper intimation of the value of 
a piece of gold in the vault. It is an intima¬ 
tion that the piece of gold is there. My young 
friends: go to your college in order to be men 
and women, full grown. Then follow the con¬ 
sequences, great and good as they can be. 
Find your motive in being what the good God 
made you to be. 


82 


XV. 


After all, the battle in the school- 
tbe Bible in room administration does not turn 
the School upon the reading of the Bible, 
however ill-conceived the expul¬ 
sion of that was. The reading of the Bible in 
the schools is only one of the less important 
procedures of something which is immeasura¬ 
bly more vital than the reading of the Bible in 
the schools. Does the teacher do an uncon¬ 
stitutional thing who inculcates religion in the 
common schools? There has never been a 
day in our school history when that thing has 
not been done in multitudes of schools, and 
there never will hereafter be a day when it is 
not being done more and more. From the 
university to the lower primary departments 
of the district schools many teachers are do¬ 
ing it. And the people will insist on its being 
done. If it be said that teaching religion is 
unconstitutional, the reply of the people will 
be that the constitution cannot mean to be so 
absurd as to prohibit the only means of form- 

83 


Uisiotts of 4 Citizen 

ing civic character, furnishing national de¬ 
fence and true scholarship. The people will 
not acquiesce in so stupid interpretation of the 
constitution, and were never so far from it as 
now. I think we may learn something from 
the Toynbee Hall, the Bermondsey House, 
the Oxford House, the Mansfield House, the 
Hull House, the Newman House, the Ando¬ 
ver House, the Charles Brace Children’s So¬ 
ciety, and so many other such establishments, 
and the Amen which is heard all through so¬ 
ciety in regard to them. They are only the 
organized spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. And 
are the people going to let the schools keep 
aloof from this movement and say nothing to 
the children in them about living on the same 
lines of high, beneficent endeavor? Why the 
mighty army of our brother laboring men 
are putting the name of Jesus on the banner 
of their mighty protest against what seems to 
them their disadvantage. And are they going 
to have the secret of the name which they in¬ 
voke kept from their little boys and girls? 
Just as much religion as the name of Jesus 
Christ, the Carpenter’s Son of Nazareth, 
stands for will be inculcated in our schools. 
The people will have it so. 

84 


Education 


Meanwhile there is a friendly controversy 
going on, not of words, for there are no mani¬ 
festoes of it abroad but of actual school ad¬ 
ministration in which a trial is being made as 
to whether the schools that inculcate right 
religion or those who do not are the better in 
the quality of their product. Time—awful 
arbiter—is steadily deciding. Of course the 
test of the product is nobly useful manhood 
and womanhood. Let us say nothing, but 
watch and decide. These passing times are 

the laboratory of great conclusions. 

85 


XVI. 


If there is one need to-day in our 
communities, it is that the princi¬ 
ples of thoroughly Christian intel¬ 
ligence, such as the right kind of 
Christian schools will give, should be wrought 
into the administration of law in our courts of 
justice. The practice of the legal profession 
can make or mar all civic life. As it is, with 
the splendid opportunity there is of good, 
there is immense need of men who will assert 
the true ideals of legal practice. We are far 
from saying that there are not such men. We 
need more—enough to establish an overpow¬ 
ering push upon young men towards splendid 
jural character. We want the very best men 
for the Christian Ministry. We want the very 
best men for the Christian Law. We would 
like to mention some names, but must not. 
If there is anything, we repeat it, in our com¬ 
munities which needs the presence of such 
men as Christian schools ought to produce, 
it is tlie legal practice —that the number of the 

86 


Christian 
training 
for the 
Professions 


Education 


men who in our courts of justice stand for 
high jural rectitude, and so educate the peo¬ 
ple up to it, may be increased. The right 
practice of the law might be one of the might¬ 
iest helps to national character. Christian 
schools are good for many things. 

It is a well known fact, mentioned also by 
Rev. Dr. Jessup in a recent address, that the 
constitution of the “plucky Bulgarian King¬ 
dom” was made by men who were educated 
at Robert College. It is nothing new. Chris¬ 
tian colleges and schools are always sources 
of liberty to nations, and its fortresses. This 
is only because they are here for making the 
leaders of Christian thought and life. 

It is hard to see why the church should be 
so very earnest that its clergy should be sub¬ 
jected to influences which will promote piety, 
and all the while be letting the education of 
men in other professions be destitute of any 
religious element. It is true the piety of the 
minister of the gospel is more directly in requi¬ 
sition because piety is what he is set to teach 
and promote. But the services of the physi¬ 
cian and of the lawyer are just as completely 
in the interest of religion, though indirectly, 

87 


Ui$iott$ of a Citizen 


as that of the clergyman. This, certainly, is 
the only Christian view of the matter. There 
is absolutely no more reason in the eye of the 
church why its lawyers and physicians or any 
lawyers and physicians should not be active 
Christians than why their ministers should not 
be. If they excuse the men of the bar and 
the dispensary they may excuse the men of 
the pulpit. If it is not their special office to 
teach it, it is their office to practice it and by 
professional and all other means to promote 
it. The lay professions may easily undo all 
the clerical profession does. They may make 
effective all the clerical profession does. They 
can multiply its productiveness ten-fold. 
They may diminish it ten-fold. All ought to 
be working together to the same end. The 
need is just as actual that the lay should have 
Christian professional training as the clerical. 
The only reason why we do not think so is 
because we do not think so. Indeed while 
the clergyman’s whole professional commit¬ 
ment makes the path of spiritual life the ob¬ 
vious one for him so that it helps him against 
irreligiousness, the professional life of the oth¬ 
er prdftf&ions makes it indispensable that they 

8S 


Education 


be mightily forewarned and forearmed so as 
to be impregnable to temptation. In any just 
view, there is no calling—not even the min¬ 
isterial—around the young men destined for 
which the prayerful solicitude and prudent 
provisions of religious influence should be so 
thoroughly thrown as these of which I am 
speaking. The young lawyers and physicians 
of our communities should be in the very heart 
of the care of those who are trying to make 
men religious. They should be in religious 
schools, under religious men. 

There is no doubt great difference between 
influences around students of law and in¬ 
fluences around students of medicine. There 
are reasons to account for it. It is enough to 
leave everyone to ascertain for himself what 
the influences in the schools of law are. They 
are open for enquiry. In them are gathered 
much of the splendid intellect of our land. 
No sane man will be indifferent to what the 
influences, as bearing upon the religious char¬ 
acter of these young men, are. No one sup¬ 
poses that any special care is had for promot¬ 
ing piety in schools of law. No one supposes 
that young men attending sthodls df law will 

S 9 


Uisions of a Citizen 


be built up in piety by anything they find 
there. Probably no one would call them, 
however the real character of the study in its 
supreme principles might lead one to expect 
it, nurseries of religious life in men. There is 
reason to believe that in most cases they work 
the other way. In many minds, even some of 
their teachers, these schools are occasion of 
great anxiety. Perhaps they are places of ex¬ 
treme peril. 


The question naturally forces itself upon us 
what is the right thing for the church to be 
having in mind in the premises? 

i. As to the professional schools, one of 
these two things is true. Either the church 
should establish Christian professional schools 
in Law and Medicine, in which men may be 
educated as Christian lawyers, Christian phy¬ 
sicians, just as Christian ministers are trained 
in tllfcir schools; or the church should liTOve 

90 



education 


up to the front and insist that into the schools 
which now exist strong Christian influences 
should be imported. The present state of 
things should not longer be endured. Either 
our own schools or improvement in what we 
have. Our sons should be trained in Law 
and Medicine in keeping with their true and 
profound fundamental principles and in cor¬ 
responding spirit. When will the church claim 
her own? When will the church have a plan 
of campaign? 

2. The professional schools should have 
their students trained for them in strictly reli¬ 
gious schools. If the state will give such 
training, thorough and sincere, well and good. 
For the multitudes this is what should be. But 
if notj as our Ministers df the Gospel, so our 
Lawyers and Physicians should be sent, for 
purposes of preparatory training, to Chris¬ 
tian colleges, where, under Christian teachers, 
amid Christian influences, from Christian 
points of view and out of fundamental theistic 
principles, the science of Law and the science 
of Healing may be reverently studied as God’s 
ordering and the arts of Healing and of Jus¬ 
tice shall lib wrought into yOung men as a 

9i 


Oisions of a Citizen 


ministry of religious service. There is no dig¬ 
nity and there is no service in any of the 
learned professions or in any work save as it 
is religious. 

Nothing is more needed than a generation 
of stalwart Christian Lawyers and Physicians. 
What I urge is that the church insist on hav¬ 
ing them. 


If I had wealth and knew of young men of 
sterling and fighting piety who were truly con¬ 
secrated to the Christian service of the pro¬ 
fession of the Law, and could be trusted 
through thick and thin, and too poor to make 
their preparation without damage to health or 
thoroughness, I should certainly find it one of 
my supremest privileges to help them. So I 
would for the calling of Medicine, though less 
than for the Law, because nothing is more 
needed than profoundly Christian fighting 
lawyers—having Christian faith enough to 

9 * 



education 


lift the noble profession of Law to its august 
dignity. I do know some young men, con¬ 
secrated, as truly as ever Adoniram Judson 
was, to being Christian leaders in the min¬ 
istry of the Gospel, who are struggling against 
too great odds of poverty. I would help them. 
Men of much—or little—money, if these were 
vour sons— 


93 


XVII. 


m 

newspaper 
in education 


It is borne in at times upon the 
minds of us teachers that other 
teachers are in competition with 
us, with whom we are fighting - al¬ 


most a losing battle. In many ways the daily 
newspaper is indispensable. For one thing, it 
is making society acquainted with itself, and 
this is, to a certain extent, needful both for 
the integral person, society, and for the frac¬ 
tional person, the individual. But we may 
be certain that disastrous results are coming 
to us all from the newspapers—so called—in 
the way of confusion of the difference between 
truth and error. Except the sense of the dif¬ 
ference between right and wrong, to be sen¬ 
sitive to the difference between truth and er¬ 
ror is the finest quality and most fundamental 
in the destiny of mind. But there is scarcely 
a page in some of the leading daily papers 
which has not much appearance of entire 
abandonment of responsibility regarding rep¬ 
resentations made of men and things. It some- 


94 


education 


times seems as if the character of every per¬ 
son and reality of every fact were left 
to the mercy of irresponsible reporters; as if 
reporters were turned loose by the journals 
they represent into the field of character and 
event, to find pasturage there for the means 
of creating marketable excitement for the peo¬ 
ple, or of party triumph. Nor is the respon¬ 
sibility of the editor sacred enough to keep 
the editorial columns, which ought to be the 
sanctuary of judiciousness, free from the pro¬ 
faneness of partisan or sordid misrepresenta¬ 
tion. It has come to such a pass that the 
distinction between truth and error seems in 
many cases to have dropped out of the consid¬ 
eration of these purveyors for the public mind, 
until whoever now reads the daily paper is in 
imminent danger of losing the delicacy of the 
logical conscience, and of becoming more or 
less oblivious, in his mental habit, of the real¬ 
ity of the truth as being a furnace against a 
lie. When we consider the appetite people 
have for being excited and being amused, to¬ 
gether with their eagerness of having parti¬ 
san preconceptions and prejudices rein¬ 
forced, and to what extent the press has be- 

95 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


come an enterprise for making money by ca¬ 
tering to what people will buy and read, we 
begin to have some conception of the baleful 
likelihoods of the education which is going 
on among us. We are in danger of becom¬ 
ing socially irresponsible as regards truth, for 
under the influence of the widely prevailing 
habit the youth of the nation are being edu¬ 
cated. What will become of us when a gen¬ 
eration shall arise which asks with a sneer: 
“What is truth?” 


Perhaps even a more damaging influence 
in the way of depraved education from the 
public press is being excited by its habit of 
holding men who are clothed with public au¬ 
thority and who represent the majesty of the 
State, up to public ridicule. Ridicule is the 
easiest, the cheapest, and may easily become 
the most vulgar and the meanest of all the low 
tricks of an irresponsible mind. It is certainly 

96 



Education 


not a gauge of wisdom to be able to raise a 
laugh at what is sacred. It is not too much 
to say, that so much is society now the victim 
of this profane handling of official position, 
so much do partisan impulses furnish hospital¬ 
ity to it, that no dignity of the public service, 
however it may take pains to deal conscien¬ 
tiously with great duties, is beyond reach of 
this base form of assault. There are some of 
our Chicago dailies which seem to us utterly 
without a sense of what their high function 
asks of them. It will take a long time to write 
eulogies of Marcus Whitman enough to over¬ 
weigh the influence of cartoons of public men 
on first pages, which are educating out of the 
young, and the adult also, that reverence 
which has ever been deemed wise and just 
towards those who represent the majesty of 
government and law—a reverence in which 
always is bred the character which makes 
such men as Whitman worthy of eulogy. It 
may not be within the range of actual law to 
put a stop to this cheap means of gratifying 
a low popular appetite, as a public nuisance 
and a menace to public virtue. Whenever the 
highest jural conscience shall exist, it will not 

97 


/ 


Uisions of 4 Citizen 

be endured. It would seem as if there ought 
to be personal thoughtfulness enough among 
us to reduce the subscription lists of such 
journals. There do seem to be discernible 
degrees of decency in the several newspapers 
we are asked to subscribe for, but unfortu¬ 
nately the presence of favorable notices of 
religious meetings and moral essays in the 
shape of editorials in them does not seem to 
hold anv inverse ratio to the measure of such 
misdemeanors. 

• 

The process of education which is going on 
in many ways is certainly enough to give the 
teacher serious questioning of the imminency 
of his work, the high spirit in which it should 
be done, and the nature of that education by 
which he must counterwork the forces which 
are antagonistic to his purposes. 

98 


College 
training for 
Business 
Cite 


XVIII 

There is a growing enlightenment 
in regard to the college, which is 
making it only the last of succes¬ 
sive stages in the process of school 
education, and neither regarding it less a need 
in preparation for life than any lower stage, 
nor more disposed to remand to a lower stage 
the candidate for any calling whatsoever. In 
earlier days the college was administered 
much as if it were for the clergymen mainly. 
Afterwards its privileges were deemed appro¬ 
priate for the teacher also. Then the number 
of lawyers resorting to it conquered it as an 
opportunity for them. At length it was 
thought to be a good thing for the physician. 
Now we have testimony which puts large pre¬ 
ponderance of the judgment of business men 
upon the side of college training as needful 
for their best success. The following is only 
one of many examples of this testimony. It 
is from one whose judgment—that of a most 
successful railroad president—does not go 
begging for audience or authority. 

99 


* 


Uisions of a Citizen 


“My Dear Prof. Blaisdell:—To the ques¬ 
tion, ‘does a college education benefit a busi¬ 
ness man,’ I reply: 

“i. Every business man who has attained 
moderate or high success with little education 
—called a self-made man—has universally ex¬ 
pressed a life-long regret that he was without 
a thorough education. The evidence of the 
witnesses—themselves the successful actors— 
cannot be disputed by outsiders—others with¬ 
out their experience and personal observa¬ 
tion. 

“2. The most successful railroad men have 
passed from the lowest positions to the high¬ 
est, and were men without college education, 
in fact many of them not having even a com¬ 
mon school education. If these men in the 
exercise of their natural mental powers were 
able to bring the railroad system to its present 
state of efficiency, what would have been the 
result if these same strong men had possessed 
high mental training? 

“3. It is true that the stone mason may lay 
as straight a line with brick and mortar as 
if he carried a college diploma, but if edu¬ 
cated, especially if thoroughly informed 

100 



education 


touching the material he uses in his business, 
he would become an expert judge of such 
material, and, with his knowledge, become 
ambitious to step from the line of stone ma¬ 
son to the position of foreman, contractor and 
proprietor. 

“4. As a rule, the uneducated man is lim¬ 
ited to doing, the educated man, with equal 
common sense, has the ability to think, origi¬ 
nate, devise, as well as to do. 

“A man of great natural ability suffers great¬ 
er waste in mental power for want of an edu¬ 
cation than the world can comprehend or 
know; but from the experience observable 
and preserved in history it is manifest that 
the greater the mental power the greater the 
loss if uneducated, and in any event it re¬ 
quires an education to complete the man. 

“The ideal college yet to come will educate 
the yc uth as thoroughly for a business as for 
a professional life. 

“Yours sincerely, 

“WM. B. STRONG.” 

If there is any member of the industrial 
w'orld to whom thorough liberal education is 
a need which is almost imperative, it is the 

101 


Ui$ioit$ of 4 Citizen 


farmer, for many reasons which it would be 
a pleasing thing to give if this were the time 
and place. Nor will it end here. What is 
there in the calling of any common—I will 
not say skilled—workman, which puts him be¬ 
yond the uses of a trained intelligence, so as 
to be quick to see, strong to grasp new and 
better methods and combinations and adapta¬ 
tions of means to ends and ends to means? 
In short, the college is only the crowning 
stage of a carefully organized procedure in the 
successive stages of which, distinguished for 
good reasons, feeble and incompetent child¬ 
hood is brought up by skilled and trained per¬ 
sons to fitness for special work or special 
preparation for special work, in which he is 
going to make his contribution to the service 
of human life. He who stops at the end of 
the primary school is incomplete. He who 
stops at the end of the grammar school is 
thought unfortunate if obliged to do so. There 
is no better reason for stopping at the end 
of the high school or academy, save that there 
is only somewhat less of incompleteness while 
there is more likelihood of a conceit of being 
prepared, which is the greatest and most fatal 


102 


education 


unpreparedness. There is actually no stop¬ 
ping place until a horizon is gained, the mind 
is stirred by larger vision, the sinews of intel¬ 
lect and will are strengthened by the gymnas¬ 
tic of long and strenuous drill, the young 
man is brought into self-revealing competi¬ 
tion with his peers and has the conceit taken 
out of him thereby, and he has learned what 
life means by witnessing the ways and feeling 
the pulses of veterans. Why stop at the lower 
shoulders of the uplands? We shall certainly 
come to this sooner or later. It does indeed 
seem a long process; but the truth is that most 
men and women enter adult work very ill pre¬ 
pared, and it is largely because they do not 
take time enough and use that time in the 
right way. When we are well along in life 
we find out that we began without being at 
all ready. The time is surely coming—it will 
not be until man’s true nobility is better un¬ 
derstood than now—when about what a good 
thorough Christian college gives will be 
deemed the most sensible preparation for any 
one whoever who is starting on a life of spe¬ 
cial work, either preparatory or ultimate. The 
college is the natural graduation into respon- 

103 


Uisions of a Citizen 


sible life. Then the time comes for special 
work either in its immediate practice or the 
special preparation for it. Something like the 
college will be the law of the start in the prob¬ 
lem of living, and what is to be the particular 
calling will make little difference. We are not 
very far along yet in the art of beginning to 
live in this wonderful world. The artisan of 
the future will be a different man from what 
he is now. 


Saying this will seem to make it necessary 
to say further, that to be such that every one 
shall need the college, the thing which the 
college is in the habit of doing for every one 
must undergo a great change. It is a question 
whether this way of thinking of the matter, 
even if it be very right, is not very wrong. 
Whether a little less of Greek or Latin— 
which is the thing which that way of thinking 

doubtless has in mind—be taught, is on the 

104 



Education 


surface of the question. If the college of the 
future is going to be the law of the beginnings 
of manhood and womanhood, its efficiency for 
this stands less in what it teaches than in the 
might of mind of the teacher. I venture to 
say that Socrates is about the sort of teacher 
who would be the best to start a bricklayer 
before learning his trade, and he shall say 
nothing about bricklaying. Common sense, 
a great heart, the moral momentum of a soul 
which is determined on being felt for good 
to that young man, and good thorough habit 
of thought about that thing he teaches—will 
be good enough for any college which the 
coming bricklayer will need, and the Latin 
and Greek, in the crucible of the mental fur¬ 
nace of the teacher, will be all right. He will 
work it into the stuff of citizenship and man¬ 
hood, bright, vigorous, productive. What he 
teaches he will make right, so that the man he 
teaches will go and do anything he has to do 
better, better and better. There is a wonder¬ 
ful alchemy in a good teacher’s brain. It can 
transmute even Latin and Greek into the 
maker of a wheelbarrow. You see, the Latin 
and Greek goes through the true teacher’s 

105 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


soul. This is just the alchemy that Roger Ba¬ 
con was guilty of—nothing more than this, 
and they did not care for such kind of gold. 

It is a greater misfortune to a father’s son 
or daughter not to have had such college 
preparation for being farmer or farmer’s wife, 
artisan or artisan’s wife, than many a father of 
that son or daughter dreams of. The pity of 
it is that the son will never be fitted to be the 
best artisan. Many an educated man will be 
standing beside that son while he is at work 
on a job in after years, and be able to tell him 
at a glance a way in which he might do that 
thing better. If not, that bystander himself 
has not gotten what a college ought to have 
given him. Many an educated woman will 
be looking on while that daughter is at work 
in making bread, in the years hence, and tell 
her how she might have saved time and 
strength and heart and peace of home. One 
day it will come to light, when the economy 
of industry shall have taken full inventory of 
gain and loss, what immense waste of work 
there is in industry’s not being bred in the 
college where the teacher is master of the art 
of training brain of thought and will. There 

106 


Education 


is almost more industry wasted by untrained 
brain of manhood—untrained in the right kind 
of a completing school like the college—than 
is productive of its dead lift. Industry is half 
wasted by lack of early education so as to 
see how things might have been better and 
more economically done. In dollars and cents 
the profit of labor today would be doubled 
if the laborer were properly trained by such 
an institution as a good college could easily 
be made if it only realized what it was meant 
to do. This is an unfinished chapter in po¬ 
litical economy; its topic would be: The Good 
College, an Economical Factor in National 
Industry. Will the farmer father who smiles 
at the thought of his farmer son’s going to 
college think of this? 


This is one perversity of the college as yet 
which the college needs to shrive itself of. 
For some reason, not far to seek, the college 

107 



Visions of 4 Citizen 


has educated its young people out of the 
handicrafts. The current of population has 
run out of the farmers and handicraftsmen 
through the college into the so-called learned 
professions, but seldom in the reverse direc¬ 
tion or from the farmers and handicraftsmen 
back into the farmers and handicraftsmen 
again. In the ideal of the college and its work¬ 
ing it will not be so, as it ought not to be so 
now, natural as it is. We shall not reach the 
consummation of service from the higher 
academic institution until its diploma is seen 
on the walls of the blacksmith’s shop and the 
carpenter’s shop and it comes to be among 
its traditions that many of its sons are in the 
ranks of artisans. All the callings are of God, 
organic functions of equally vital quality for 
the edifying of the state in living well. The 
college will one day be the alma mater of men 
and women in all callings. Alexander, the 
coppersmith, brought to his right mind, will 
be on its board of trustees. The only aristoc¬ 
racy it ministers to will be the aristocracy of 
those who are prepared. The laborer and the 
capitalist will then be able to find a ratio 
vivendi. 


108 


XIX 


the College 
and tbe 
Tarmer 


In a recent conversation with a 
very sagacious and well-known 
layman I had from him expression 
of what I regard as a serious in¬ 


indictment against the administration of the 
college and the university. It is that while 
they serve the uses of the clerisy, the law, 
medicine, teaching, and, in some measure, the 
calling of the editor, the merchant and the 
large manufacturer, they do little for the farm¬ 
er and the artisan. My wise friend contended 
that, as for the farmer, his occupation put him 
in need of the best mental training in order 
to his meeting the actual varied demands it 
made upon him, of large information about 
the matters he has to deal with in it, and of 
both in order to maintain the peerage of his 
calling amid the crowd of competition by 
which the less instructed are always being 
driven to the wall. This is true, and one of 
the things most vital to the present exigency 
of society. The farmer and artisan need to be 
educated as well as other people, and until 
they are they will inevitably be oppressed and 


109 


Uisions of a Citizen 


at disadvantage, in legislation, in administra¬ 
tion and in social adjustment; neither will any 
socialistic adjustment have a feather’s weight 
to help it. 

Radical relief will not come by agricultural 
schools as a part of university provision. No 
technical instruction in anything, law, medi¬ 
cine or clerisy, will put the man who has not 
an all-around thorough academical education 
on a level in the long run with the man who 
has. The man who goes to the Law school 
and not first to college will perhaps have an 
advantage for a little time over the man who 
has had the college education previously. But 
in the long race the thoroughbred racer will 
win. It is so with the farmer. The aspiring 
boy from the farm may attend the school of 
Agriculture for two years, and learn much it 
is valuable for him to know, but the same boy 
going to college and being thoroughly trained 
there, and then availing himself of the course 
of special study for the farmer at the univer¬ 
sity, is doing therein just the thing which will 
render him able to make farming what it 
ought to be, maintain it in the competitive 
struggle of industries, and keep himself by the 

no 


education 


side of his fellow citizens in the march of in¬ 
telligence. In short, the college is as neces¬ 
sary an antecedent of the school of agricult¬ 
ural study for the farmer as the theological 
school for the clergyman or the law school 
for the legal attorney. I know that many are 
supposing otherwise. I fear it is only because 
the matter has not been thought through by 
them. I would like to have the farmer boys 
think it over carefully and decide with great 
deliberation. It is, at least, said for their help. 
Come and talk it over. 


One thing is certain, the question of what 
is to become of American farming is about 
as important as any that we are likely to be 
asking. The gentleman—and if I should 
mention his name, it would carry weight with 
every citizen of the commonwealth—dwelt 
much on this. The migration of the callings 

hi 



Uisiotts of a Citizen 


is almost a more serious thing than the mi¬ 
gration of nations, and the pages of the census 

report, which enable us to see what is pass¬ 
ing on the farms, are deeply suggestive read¬ 
ing. The farmers’ boys and girls are going to 
the cities and larger towns, so that partly the 
farms are becoming deserted, partly they are 
falling into the hands of a foreign population, 
and partly they are becoming aggregated into 
large landed estates so as to generate in the 
place of independent farmers a peasant ten¬ 
antry. It will be a serious thing for us to be 
destitute of the old race of farmers, in the 
coming issues, men able to stand in the inter¬ 
est of industrial, social and civic affairs, self- 
respecting and authoritative, in the peerage of 
other callings. Without such no nation has 
ever been able to maintain its healthy social 
equilibrium. And in our day, with growing 
education elsewhere, they also must be edu¬ 
cated. 

To meet the requirement made upon the 
college by my friend two things must work 
together inseparably. One is that the prevail¬ 
ing sentiment in the farmer’s family must be 
such as to bring the boy who goes from the 

112 


Education 


farm to the college to be a scholar back to the 
farm again to be a farmer. There are some of 
us who have seen a good deal of life to the 
result of being convinced that not nearly all 
the satisfaction of living is from being exempt 
from severe physical toil, being in the crowd 
of towns and their excitements, and wearing 
garments in the style and free from soil. Mul¬ 
titudes of the great and good men in the 
world’s affairs have gone back to the fields 
from which early impulse or noble sacrifice 
for their country called them. Life’s fuller 
experience disillusions us. It would be very 
well, and prove in the end absolutely better, 
for many a young fellow and young fellow’s 
betrothed to cast in their lot with the tillage 
of the plow-land and the grazing of the pas¬ 
turage, with all it means of drudgery, and 
calm, quiet joys. Many a father’s and moth¬ 
er’s affection for the children would be more 
wisely directed in urging this than in pleading 
for some calling in the great and turbulent 
world outside, which, if it has its claims and 
its satisfactions, can better spare multitudes 
to dustier offices and serener lives. Young 

113 


Uisions of a Citizen 


man, go to the farm. Young woman, go to 
the headship of your young farmer boy’s 
household. But be thoroughly educated. 

The other thing is that the college complete 
its frontage by presenting a warm side toward 
the farm and the workshop. The college began 
with educating the clergymen; became a little 
wideband thought of making teachers; became 
a little wider and made lawyers; became a lit¬ 
tle wider still, and talked to the young men of 
being physicians. Then editors, then engi¬ 
neers, and so on. Now let us round it up by 
putting in its program the making of farmers 
and workers in wood and brass and iron. I 
would not alter the course of study much; 
leave that for the after-school. Make all- 
- around men and women, with a catholic man¬ 
ifesto that very probably some of them will 
take up the fundamental work of providing the 
material supplies of existence, and draw off 
some of the blood of society from the congest¬ 
ed nerves to the anaemic muscles. I have 
known not a few young men, now holding on 
for dear life on a profession, who might be 

walking with solid feet over the problem of a 
farm of two or four eighties, with far greater 

114 


Education 


usefulness to society. A college is a distrib¬ 
uting depot to the needs of the social market, 
and ought to have a sagacious and catholic 
heart. And the college must begin. 

n'5 


XX 


I came across a program of a 
lftttbOd teachers’ institute the other day, 

and Soul one w hi c j 1 gave no sign of being in 

any way exceptional. It seemed to 
be taken up from beginning to end with the 
ways of doing things. Method, method, meth¬ 
od. How to do this and how to do that. It 
was just a piece of mechanics. I held it up 
to my ear, shook it a little, and I could hear 
it rattle for very dryness. One would hope 
that the man who conducted that institute 
had some kernel of life in him, and it would 
have been still better if he had made some 
provision in that program for some great ut¬ 
terance conveying impulses which must ad¬ 
minister the very best methods to make them 
accomplish any manhood, womanhood—cit¬ 
izenship, in the pupils. The character of these 
institutes is determined largely by our normal 
schools. We are grateful that some of our 
normal schools are in the hands of men who 
know what an institute ought to be. Perhaps 
all are. Anyway, an institute ought to be a 

116 



education 


furnace of fire. A small intellect can concoct 
an ingenious scheme of how. Put your en¬ 
dowed soul at work upon making a program 
for such purposes. Find Thomas Arnold. If 
you cannot find him, hunt up Mark Hopkins. 
If you are too late for him, get the heathen 
Socrates. No, the program which our teach¬ 
ers’ institute needs is a program which is made 
by Jesus Christ. It would be thorough, close 
and full, but it would make the hearts of the 
teachers burn. They would go away in the 
spirit of the dear love for the loftiest and the 
lowliest. We surely are not shut up to the 
necessity of having programs made on the 
principle of mechanics. See to it wild makes 
your program. The truth is, all our schools 
ought to be thoroughly Christian, and our 

teachers’ institutes as well. 

117 


XXI 


make 
my Boy 
Judicious 


Of all the qualities of mind which 
education can give, far the best is 
judiciousness. Others perhaps are 
more brilliant and attract attention 


more. In the existing marvelous chaos of no¬ 
tions about education this is one of the last 
things thought of. It is no doubt excellent to 
be made learned not only in the general prin¬ 
ciples but in the details of ever so many sci¬ 
ences, physical and mental, though no per¬ 
son runs more risk of losing the best of life 
than he who is a specialist in any one science 
to the exclusion of the rest. It is fine to be 
made by drill what may be called an intellectu¬ 
al athlete, in intellect strong, alert, deft, broad, 
penetrating, skillful to thrust and to parry. 
These things are what many a school does, 
more or less and after a fashion. But all this 
does not go far towards effecting the normal 
condition of mind. Give me the school which 
trains the young mind to be judicious. Of 
course this may be accomplished somewhat by 
leading the pupil to be careful in the way of 


education 


acquiring' learning through balancing of evi¬ 
dence for the purpose of coming to conclu¬ 
sions. Intellectual drill will be helpful to it. 
Anyway, if the teacher will teach the pupil 
to be judicious, I will ask nothing more of 
him. It includes pretty much all. If the 
young person comes out of school without it, 
at least without having gained the certainty 
of learning it, he is not fit to graduate. 
Learned? Yes. Brilliant? Yes. Penetrat¬ 
ing? Yes. But judicious. This is the im¬ 
perial quality, and the school is not doing its 
work without giving it to mm. 

You will observe how finely that word ju¬ 
dicious has outgrown its earlier etymological 
meaning, for now it has had put into it a good 
deal more than the habit of making right judg¬ 
ments. Mr. Lincoln was judicious in his ad¬ 
ministration of affairs not only in his wise 
judgments as to what he ought to do, but in 
following them. School is a training in judi¬ 
cious action, for it is largely practice, and he 
gets the best of it who learns there the habit of 
practice that is judicious. What other thing 
is of so much importance? Out are going the 
young people into the world where life is 

pretty much all practice, and sciences and arts 

119 


Uisions of a Citizen 


are nothing but helps to practice—in village, 
commonwealth, country, the universe of moral 
government. It is practice, practice, all 
through—and to be judicious in it is the key 
of destiny. Acting upon good judgments is 
the right living; it is living. 

A friend at my elbow suggests that judi¬ 
ciousness is rather a negative quality—mean¬ 
ing the avoidance of indiscretion, whereas life 
requires that we be militant. Judiciousness is 
not aggressive enough, he thinks. I do not 
think so. That is only half of the quality, be¬ 
ing judicious in avoiding doing the unwise 
thing. The militant half is in doing the wise 
thing. Washington? Lincoln? Yes, but 
also the coral builders of the kingdom of good 
—unobserved ones perhaps, not showy, but 
doing just the right thing in the right way, 
at the right time, taking in the whole horizon 
of circumstances, judicial in mental habit, but 
judicial in habit of action, and so judicious. 

That thing should be taught in school, for 
unless it is taught there it will not be likely to 
be taught anywhere and, if it is not taught 
anywhere, it is not of very much value that 
anything be taught, and schools become a 
dtiubtfid blessing* The more ytm give 

12b 


Education 


strength, the more you give brilliancy, the 
more you give penetration, quickness, learn¬ 
ing, the more armament you give to indiscre¬ 
tion, if indiscretion is in the field. Judicious¬ 
ness is always and absolutely safe with what¬ 
ever weapons, and the more weapons you give 
it the better for everybody and everything. 

Think of the immense prevalence of the op¬ 
posite habit of mind. It is well nigh impossible 
for one to avoid being of some party and see¬ 
ing most things with its one Polyphemus eye 
and crying its cry. Society has almost as lit¬ 
tle stillness and deliberation as there was in 
the assembly at Ephesus among the worship¬ 
ers of the great goddess Diana, “some crying 
one thing, some another.” The American na¬ 
tional genius is running rapidly to Gallic ad¬ 
vocacy. Mr. Bryce describes us as being 
largely a nation of lawyers. We look for head¬ 
lines in the newspapers and are hungry for 
manifestos and campaign bulletins. How few 
are strong enough amid the din to be loyal to 
truth unless against great odds, to be leisurely 
candid and absolutely judicious. Of course 
there are multitudes of influences in school life 
working in the same direction. One is almost 
tempted to say with half smile and half sigh 

121 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


that about the worst thing that can be said of 
the Greek language is that it furnishes an 
alphabet out of which war-cries are compound¬ 
ed the influence of which the dear fellows 
have to fight against in order not to contract 
mental strabismus. 


We want Christian teachers therefore and I 
do not believe you will find the quality in 
its profoundest meaning in any one who is not 
deeply religious. 

For, if you ask me where I find the funda- 

mentral trait of character which makes it sure 

that the young people will be judicious, I 

must find it suggested in what I read the other 

day of one whose name you have perhaps 

never heard, because he was not accustomed 

to do his work with noise, while being all the 

more a vast power in the midst of “London’s 

central roar.” “He seemed to bear about with 

him a certain hidden, constraining and en- 

ndbling fear which wtmld ha'vte td tte gdt rid df 

122 



education 


before time-serving or unreality could have 
any chance with him. Whatever that fear 
was, it told upon his work in many ways. It 
sustained with an imperious and ever present 
sanction his sense and care for perfect jus¬ 
tice, in act and word, in his own life and in 
his verdicts upon the past. And it may well 
have borne its fruit in making his style what 
it was for probably few men have ever written 
so well and stayed so simply anxious to write 
truly.” Awe before Him who is truth for 
thought and life is the only thing that can 
make sure the judiciousness of mind in 
youth and people. You may as well hold 
hounds in calm without leash, as mind in even 
keel without sense of the sacredness of truth. 
A generation will flout truth, unless they find 
it the thought of a holy person. This is the 
bottom of scientific restrainedness. The voice 
of conscience toward truth is the scientific 
spirit—the one surety of the judicious mind. 
“Truly it is Heaven on earth to have a man’s 
mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and 

turn upon the pole of truth.” 

123 



Society an& IReform 


He who stilled the waves on the sea 
of Galilee is the Statesman Prince of 
human society. He only is able to 
organize successful civilization. Let 
us do our best to give Him entrance 
where His word is needed. Out of the 
East comes the reveille of those who 
believe in Him as out of the East came 
the early promise of all modern history 
in the Christmas song. 

—An Editorial. 












I 


When Themistocles said: “I can- 
« not fiddle, but I can make a small 

nobility of . 

Citizenship town a great Clty ’ lf he knew 

what he was saying, he spoke with 

a great and deep meaning. We often think, 
in our smallness of vision, that to make an 
Iliad or a Paradise Lost, to chisel from marble 
an Apollo or a Moses, to build through the toil 
of a generation a great cathedral like that of 
Cologne or Strasburg or Milan, to organize 
mighty thoughts into mighty words so as at 
length to make a book that the ages will not 
willingly let die is almost the grandest of hu¬ 
man achievements and impossible without di¬ 
vine inspiration. But neither of these is equal 
to the production of a ripe commonwealth. 
This is not, indeed, within the compass of any 
one person’s individual endowments, for, while 
it now and then is the privilege of one person, 
by being the leader of less endowed minds, to 
determine in the beginning, as Washington or 
Alfred, or at a critical juncture, as Lincoln or 
Hampden or Solon, how a nation shall be 

127 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 

builded, many only, through slow-footed cen¬ 
turies, can avail to actually accomplish the 
building. And far more wonderful and excel¬ 
lent as is the state than poem or chiseled stone 
or venerable cathedral, seeing that it is the 
parent of these and includes their being within 
its own larger being, how manifold, how provi¬ 
dent, how gifted with insight, how self-con¬ 
trolled in caring for the best things must each 
generation be, which contributes in its fleeting 
day to the growing and venerable structure! 

128 


II 


Said a teacher to his class recently 
Cbe Great on returning to them after two or 

Art three days’ absence: “I come 

back to you in a very serious state 
of mind. I have been, since I left you, in the 
Industrial school, at Waukesha, where are 
gathered 371 disadvantaged boys; also in the 
state prison at Waupun, where are nearly 700 
criminals, mostly young men of from 18 to 
35 years of age. I have been looking into the 
billiard rooms and saloons of Milwaukee; I 
have been to and fro on railway trains and 
have found everywhere multitudes of young 
men. I am depressed and awed with the enor¬ 
mous waste of human souls. Men, young 
men—and women, astray. I come back to 
you, young men, very serious, very serious. 
And more and more am I persuaded that the 
art of Rhetoric is the art of personal influence, 
of person upon person, not so much on plat¬ 
form or in pulpit, but face to face in the con¬ 
fronting of one man with one man. If I were 
a student in college, the thing I would most as¬ 
siduously do, is to cultivate the power of in- 

129 


Uisions of a Citizen 


fluencing men to help them. I would study, 
study hard, would work to my utmost, but 
only that I might do this. The great art—the 
art of arts, is not painting, not music, not 
poetry, but the art of making men virtuous— 
of influencing men to be men—the art of mak¬ 
ing men good. ‘They that turn many to 
righteousness shall shine as the sun and as 
the stars forever and ever.’ ‘Shall save a soul 
from death.’ ” 


130 


Ill 


I sometimes think that the most 
tbe Adult's serious part of the problem of edu- 
ScbOOl cation is the education of us adults. 

The children we always have our 
minds upon, and poor things, we never forget 
that they are in school. But we seem to act 
as if we thought we had got through. It would 
not be quite practicable, very likely, to have 
a national bureau of adult education, but, if it 
were, it would be very valuable, if for nothing 
more, in impressing on us that after school is 
over our education is only just begun. A re¬ 
markable lecture from Bishop Ireland the oth¬ 
er evening to some six thousand of us on 
American Citizenship was only one little les¬ 
son. When the lecture was over the schooling 
went right on. It is all the day, as soon as 
we awake in the morning until we sleep at 
night. Hardly does sleep interrupt it. It is 
not all by lecture, by Bishop Ireland, by the 
Sunday sermon, by the voices of the Wise and 
Good, by great books and great process. We 
do not exactly recite, just in the way our chil¬ 
li 


Uisions or a Citizen 


dren do. We do not have to give account of 
ourselves, though we shall have to sometime. 
Our recitations take, at least, another form; 
we recite by the way we behave ourselves and 
talk and live. We do not have to go together 
into a recitation room. We recite in our 
homes, in our counting-rooms, behind our 
teams while ploughing, while we are kneading 
our bread and sweeping our floors. We are 
reciting while we are talking with our neigh¬ 
bors in the parlor, while we are at the milli¬ 
ners, while we are at the club. We are not 
without a teacher and a good one. He hears 
our recitations. He is always trying to help 
us through and always with the same dear 
countenance, looking on, but he marks our 
recitations and knows whether they are good 
or poor. 

It does seem as if a great part of the con¬ 
fusion and mischief would be pretty much over 
if we could only come to take this home to our¬ 
selves. I know this, that a large part of the 
burden of getting things on would be out of 
the way if we realized that we are all only 
just in a higher grade than our children in the 
same process of being educated. Somehow it 

has gotten into the minds of the children, per- 

132 


Society and Reform 

haps partly by a sort of instinct, evolved 
through successive generations, what they 
are about. They grow up from infancy with 
the notion that they are at school. If they 
go to play in their splendid unconsciousness, 
hurry after them to tell them it is school time, 
and they must go—run. And they submit to 
it, and now pretty much all of them have it in 
their little heads, that for the time being the 
chief end of childhood is to be in school, get¬ 
ting its lessons. They would as soon think of 
forgetting that they have heads as forgetting 
that they are being educated, whatever that 
may mean to them. But absolutely about the 
only difference between us and them is that 
our school has a different teacher, or rather 
has not such a one as theirs; the recitations are 
habits; the school-house is larger and has a 
separate recitation room for each scholar; we 
are not compelled to have good lessons unless 
we have a mind to, but heavier responsibilities 
in case we fail, and school keeps all the time. 

It really does look sometimes as if the chil¬ 
dren, whom we so often blame for running 
away from school or being idle and inattentive 
to their work, were doing their school work 
better than some of us are doing ours. I will 

T 33 


Uisions of a Citizen 

even go further and affirm that in very many 
cases there is really more reason for your 
bright-eyed roguish boy or your demure dim¬ 
ple-cheeked maiden of a girl to look out at you 
from under the eyebrows at the supper table 
and say, as we say to them: “Father, have 
you been diligent in school to-day?” “Mother, 
have you had good lessons to-day?” You 
know these young people have long thoughts, 
and, if they do not say it, they may think it, 
which is far more to be considered. Tell me, 
most of all, what my children think of me, for 
that is my most awful day of judgment. 
“Father, were you drunk yesterday? Johnnie 
said you were, and I couldn’t believe it; were 
you, Father?” said a little girl to her father a 
few months ago, and that made the father a 
sober man. Well it might. 

i34 


IV 


Too low an estimate is put upon 
Caw as an law as a means of educating society 
educator in what is right and what is wrong. 

It is treated as being nothing more 
than a rule, originating, indeed, in the calcu¬ 
lations, more or less sagacious, of a political 
sovereign, but having nothing to give it in¬ 
fluence but its conduciveness to public welfare, 
or the existence of a corporate force behind it, 
strong enough to make compliance with it 
unavoidable. Not that men understand the 
law to be laid on them with indifference as to 
whether it be obeyed or disobeyed, or with the 
alternative of obeying it, or submitting to the 
consequences. Perhaps men are enough alive, 
if everything else were as it should be, to 
the determination of society to be obeyed and 
to the iron hand which disobedience brings 
upon itself. The trouble is far deeper. Men 
forget that the law is anything more than a 
simple arrangement of police, carefully con¬ 
ceived it may be, fixed upon as being precisely 
the necessary contrivance for bringing about 
the best ends, promulgated in a most business- 

135 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


like manner, and left, commended by no moral 
momentum which has generated it, to make its 
way of control by the general convenience 
obeying it will bring, and the personal incon¬ 
venience which will overtake him who treats 
it with neglect. 

Now, in any right conception, law is a pow¬ 
erful public educator. Put a reasonable en¬ 
actment on the statute book, and let brave 
and resolute men devote themselves to enforc¬ 
ing it, and if it be intrinsically reasonable, the 
very holding of it insistently on the deliberate 
thought of men will quietly win for it recog¬ 
nition of its claim. There is nothing like do¬ 
ing a reasonable thing for making its reason¬ 
ableness acknowledged. A victory accom¬ 
plished, if on just principles, is sooner or later 
a victory confessed. Let there be placed upon 
the statute-book or in the organic law of Wis¬ 
consin, a law forbidding the traffic in intoxi¬ 
cating drinks, that law placed there, under the 
burning gaze which will be fixed upon it, and 
insisted on, will do more to bring up to its 
level, organize, elaborate and settle public sen¬ 
timent, than many years of discussion, while 
the action in question is trembling in the even 
scale of indecision. 

136 


Society and Reform 

Suppose, however, we give a deeper turn to 
our thoughts as to what a law put upon the 
statute book really signifies. Law is far from 
being a mere police regulation, an arrange¬ 
ment contrived for a people’s direction as a 
farmer builds fences for unappreciative cattle, 
or road masters set guide-boards which simply 
stand and point, but do not “strive nor cry.” 
It must be confessed that thin and bloodless 
estimates of law have too much excuse in the 
spirit in which laws are often made. A law 
which has its motive in personal or partisan ad¬ 
vantage, and is the utterance of a disposition in 
the sovereign which is fed by no grand moral 
ideas, will no doubt be met by an easy-going 
treatment on the part of those for whom it 
is enacted. Even a parental authority which 
has no weight of character behind it will com¬ 
mand no inevitable obedience in front of it. 
Napoleon III., without moral manhood, when 
bullets and battalions fail, becomes only the 
victim of barricades and, in the end, of ridicule. 

It is high time to awake to the fact that to 
put prevalence into law we must put character 
into the law-makers. The people will do well 
to re-enforce the people, if they will re-enforce 
their legislation. There is only this one way 

i37 


Uisions of a Citizen 


for a sovereign, be he school-master, parent, 
king or people, to give his ordinances efficacy, 
whether to control the ordinary processes of 
crime, or Mormons, whisky traffickers, and so¬ 
cial anarchists. It is to fill into his person¬ 
ality intelligent and massive virtue, real moral 
weight. Let law come forth from the people 
with the momentum given by such qualities, 
and legislation will recover its ancient preroga¬ 
tive. “Gentlemen, if we would re-make Italy, 
we must re-make ourselves.” 

It is to be believed that such legislative ac¬ 
tion is making itself ready in the settled pur¬ 
pose of our people. The respectable citizen¬ 
ship of the nation has its mind well made up 
and in a condition to declare itself. The en¬ 
lightened yeomanry of the Northern States is 
in harmony with the enlightened yeomanry 
of the Southern States. Now only let 
this declaration be made. Let us all 
come in and close ranks. The voice of 
such a majority of such a people, being their 
solemn testimony that the traffic in liquor 
which thrives by the wretchedness and the 
ruin of society is a crime, entered as a part 
of our organic law, reiterated in courts of 
justice where law puts on its most impressive 

138 


Society and Reform 

majesty, and having the Amen of its friends 
in the common intercourse of neighborhood 
life, will not have long to wait before a genera¬ 
tion will cover the land who will smile when 
told that the endurance of the outrage ever 
entered into the thought of civilized man. 

i39 


V 


If any one wishes to look deep 
tlK Pathos down into the sad things of Wis- 
^ consin, let him go to the Industrial 

school at Waukesha. Not that 
there are not others, but Waukesha Industrial 
School! As I passed up the aisle of the 
school-room I caught the eye of a bright, 
beautiful dark-eyed boy of fourteen, who had 
been sent up for taking something thought¬ 
lessly from a pavement counter. I met his 
look with a smile of recognition, and it was 
returned by a sad smile which I shall never 
forget. They said that when he stood at the 
door of the school-room for the first time on 
entering it, and looked around, he burst into 
a flood of tears. There was a fine little fellow 
there a while ago—perhaps he is there now 
—who came because his bigger brother was 
sent there, and they could not bear to be sepa¬ 
rated. An exception was made in their case 
and they were allowed to occupy the same bed 
at night and were accustomed to fall asleep 
in each others arms. Oh heart, heart! 

140 


VI 


Accessories 
to Reform* 

pensities. 


Penal and reformatory institu¬ 
tions among us are relied on too 
exclusively by us as means of deal¬ 
ing with crime and criminal pro- 
Of course the thing to do with the 
actual criminal is to shut him up under dis¬ 
ciplinary treatment in some reformatory or 
penitentiary, where he can bethink himself 
and learn to do better; and there is a great 
amount of this thing in the state which ought 
to be consigned there, but is not, either be¬ 
cause it is not found out and laid hold of by 
the officers, either because they cannot, or be¬ 
cause they cannot turn a penny if they do it 
and can if they do not do it, or it eventually 
slips, by fair measures or foul, through the 
hands of Courts of Justice, which ought to 
have strong hands, clear eyes and clean soul. 


♦Professor Blaisdell was several times delegate to the Inter¬ 
national Convention of Charities and Correction, and served on 
many important committees. For three years and at the time 
of his death he was President of the Wisconsin Children’s 
Home Society, to which he gave a constant and unstinted 
energy. 


141 



Uisions of a Citizen 

But society has yet to learn that there are 
many other things to be done in the way of 
putting a stop to crime besides the penitentiary 
and the industrial school. As for the man 
who has really committed crime, he cannot be 
dealt with, save in the most extraordinary 
cases, in any other way than by some institu¬ 
tion of public detention and chastisement; but 
this is quite possible short of the State’s Prison. 
In multitudes, perhaps—probably—the major¬ 
ity of cases, if the state would consent to make 
some provision in connection with which it 
could discharge upon him influences specific¬ 
ally for reform, the man whom the peniten¬ 
tiary makes worse, would probably be made 
better. And so, also, the Industrial School 
is not anything more than an extreme resort 
for young offenders who have only or hardly 
entered on the current of criminal propensity. 
There is an awful blur or clot of heartlessness 
in the way in which a commonwealth, in the 
provision of its law, allows its young citizens to 
be huddled off in the lump into the Industrial 
School. Even in cases where the interposi¬ 
tion of the authority of a Court of Justice has 
to be invoked, it seems almost absurd that the 

fingers of a judge must be required to be so 

142 


Society and Reform 

all thumbs as not to be allowed the discretion 
of making some other disposition of a boy 
than to send him to an institution of reform. 
It would seem as if, in dealing with children 
and youth, the Industrial School should be ad¬ 
ministered as a last resort—that, as there are 
other things which might better be done for 
the lad, so, with any such Court as ought to 
be entrusted with such matters, it might be 
allowed by the law, and practiced always by 
the Court, that it should be done. When those 
fail—only when those fail—then the Industrial 
School with its institutional treatment. If 
such a course were taken, it might turn out so 
well that the dear young lad would hardly 
even know of any scar in his young life— 
young life which we are privileged to remem¬ 
ber with so much joy. 

But apart from the ways open for the treat¬ 
ment of the criminal by the state itself in its 
civic capacity, the attitude of the people in 
respect to crime ought to be so considerate as 
to realize that in the heart of society—not the 
state, but society—associationally and indi¬ 
vidually, resources of influence highly avail¬ 
able do abundantly exist, if they could be put 
in use, to do the work, mainly beforehand, 

i43 


Visions or a Citizen 

which is now left, for its last stage, doggedly, 
to the Industrial School, and to the State’s 
Prison for the very last. Every community is 
an organization for the very purpose, partly, 
of bringing to bear upon the youth in its bosom 
the influences which it may possess and ef¬ 
fectually use if it will—of the good, healthful 
village school, the public lecture, provision for 
proper amusement, especially the church, with 
its Sunday school, to make them grow up into 
useful and virtuous citizens. How ought the 
men and women of the communities of our 
state to see that such influences are every¬ 
where exerted, instead of allowing the saloon, 
the gambling room, the house of sexual vile¬ 
ness, and the vilely suggestive show, to have 
their criminal and disastrous sway and escape 
from the State’s Prison which they richly de¬ 
serve, and stupidly wait until the youth are 
debauched, and then commit them by an 
acute onset of civic horror into the Industrial 
School and Penitentiary! There are societies, 
too, public and private, institutional and not 
institutional—the Orphan Asylums, the Pri¬ 
vate Charitable Associations, the Friendly As¬ 
sociations, the Young Women’s Homes, the 

College Settlements, the beautiful Children’s 

144 


Society and Reform 

Home Society and others—many of them 
needing to be sustained. On the homes, too, 
rest the responsibility of being so administer¬ 
ed that they would have widespread influence, 
as they would have if well administered, in 
preventing crime. If our homes, the homes 
of those who are intelligent and mean to be 
virtuous, were all they ought to be for the 
children and the neighbors’ children, the in¬ 
fluence would go abroad and do morally alter¬ 
ative work. Then, the individual citizenship. 
If all the citizens of really virtuous character, 
or a very large portion of them, each for him¬ 
self without waiting for another, were a sort 
of loving police to lead the children and youth 
of their various communities in casual, but 
genial, ways by the brooding of their maturer 
minds, and by the magnetic example of splen¬ 
did character, how little would the Penal and 
Reformatory Institutions have to do, and how 
successful would they be! On these condi¬ 
tions these institutions would find their proper 
office. Alas, it is this imperturbable way of 
going on our ways, feeling badly, some of 
us, but doing not much, and letting the In¬ 
dustrial School and Penitentiary do the whole, 

when the time comes, that makes the Peni- 

i45 


Oisions of a Citizen 

tentiary and the Industrial School able to do 
so little. The whole commonwealth is the in¬ 
stitution for taking care of crime, and only the 
last desperate resort is these institutions. We 
talk about the churches doing it; the whole 
commonwealth ought to be Christ’s Church 
in being like Him and doing just this work 
which He was always doing. Only those who 
have survived the mighty love of a social com¬ 
monwealth to prevent them, are the ones re¬ 
served for the civil commonwealth and judicial 
effort. If we could only come to this! If we 
could only come to this! There is a grim ab¬ 
surdity in supposing that we ever shall have 
much success in any other way. There are 
some of these moral laws in the movement of 
a commonwealth that we have to reckon with 
and cannot flank or circumvent. One of them 
is that we cannot accomplish moral ends of the 
common weal through acute official acts and 
leave ourselves at large from chronic personal 
effort with the heart in it. 

146 


VII 


the The absolutely most fundamental 

and universal datum to proceed 

of Delinquent , f, , . 

Children u P on m this domain is, that in 

every wayward boy or man there is 
something responsive to the Divine; so that 
through this there is an entrance for approach 
of good, open to men and women who have 
what is genuinely divine in themselves. Call 
this power of approach what you will. It is 
God dwelling in some men and women, in His 
love, His yearning compassion, His faith in us, 
His hope for us, His requirements of men in 
His law, His redeeming love for us to the 
measure of Calvary—approaching into the 
lives of these morally diseased children, and 
trying to bring them into reach of His friend¬ 
ship and life. The men and women who have 
in them the indwelling God—teachers, of¬ 
ficers, bookkeepers, matrons, superintendent, 
board of control, are the constitutional agen¬ 
cies to be applied in rightly adjusted circum¬ 
stances to realize the possibilities of a Reform 
School, and draw up waters for these children 

i47 


Uisioits of i Citizen 


out of the wells of permanent and profound 
salvation. I need not mention the pioneers of 
this beneficent movement, John Howard and 
Elizabeth Fry. Nay, we have had such 
amongst us. The name of Col. Tufts of Con¬ 
cord springs unbidden to my lips. Go find 
such men and women. Go find such men and 
women, and high above all party, all sect, all 
favoritism, all gain, in the spirit of divinely 
commissioned fatherhood of the Common¬ 
wealth, put these children into their trust! In 
the care of a well-ordered, genial, Christian 
household, then, you will have made the ex¬ 
periment of what the work of reform can do, 
and only then. 


What I crave, moreover, the privilege of 

saying is that being approached through the 

religious motive is not only the only effective 

way of dealing with the children of the state, 

but the normal and reasonable way. You may 

consent, if you must, to the parvenu judge- 

148 



Society ana Reform 

made doctrine that it is in the organic life of 
Wisconsin that the children of our people shall 
not from their childhood upward have the re¬ 
ligious motive in them addressed in the Public 
School where the heirs of Alfred and Hamp¬ 
den and Washington and Hamilton and Lin¬ 
coln are trained to the citizenship of consti¬ 
tutional duty and privilege. Vindicate, if you 
can to your satisfaction, your unaccountable 
judgment by saying that this may be done 
with them at home and through the thousand 
avenues of social contact; but that for these 
children of contaminated heredity and savage 
environments, who have never heard of relig¬ 
ion save in hearing it profaned, being now shut 
up with one another in a condition to have 
their misunderstanding of religion and all 
about it bred in and in by being associated to¬ 
gether, not now to take the opportunity of 
hastening to make up the sad arrearages by 
opening to them the disclosure that they have 
a Heavenly Father as well as a holy lawgiver 
and final judge, and a Savior who will be their 
friend, and letting Heaven have its day with 
them to restore the troubled balance of their 
being and introduce them to their imperilled 
dignifies as men* especially when it is fhe for- 

149 


Uisions of a Citizen 


lorn hope of their recovery from ruin, person¬ 
ally and for the state, and nothing else can 
touch them—is there anything more astound¬ 
ing than the cruelty of the neglect unless it be 
its tremendous impolicy and waste? 


The administration of a system of reform 
for the delinquent children of a State is of 
course most difficult. Probably we must say, 
with caution, that some, by reason of brain or 
other physical malformation, cannot be re¬ 
formed* But we are coming to suspect that 
there is somewhere a remedy for every disease 
of the human body. It will be discovered that 
we are only in the early stages of medicining 
the diseases of the body politic. It is my 
persuasion that a better day will dawn. There 
is certainly much that we can do that we have 
not done. Certainly some things quite prac¬ 
tical are very plain. The dire alternative is 
the sacrifice involved of increasing criminality 
and ultimate disaster. Two hundred thdus- 

150 



Society and Reform 

and criminals, actual criminals, are at large in 
our country to-night. They are intermarry¬ 
ing and multiplying rapidly. The harvest is 
swelling up around our homes and climbing 
the barriers that shelter our civilization. It is 
an hour of decision. Civilization has never 
disclosed in itself any principle of self-preserva¬ 
tion. If we rely on our Christianity it is vain 
to think that Christianity will save us from the 
fate of past civilizations unless Christianity put 
forth its arm. If we will make what sacrifices 
are needed, the future will be secured to us 
and to our children. The problem is, con¬ 
fessedly, very largely with the children, and 
in our schools for Reform it is for us an im¬ 
mense responsibility. The gravity of that re¬ 
sponsibility and the issues that depend, we 
have scarcely begun to estimate. But there 
is a way of meeting it, great as it is. We need 
courage and purpose. Study the methods of 
safety as the farmer is studying now the sow¬ 
ing of his grain in the spring, and the harvest 
of a recovered and virtuous citizenship will be 
as certain as that which will make green next 
summer’s corn fields. Some seeds, alas, the 
sunlight will never be able to bring to fruit. 

But as in the physical so in the moral wtfrlti 

151 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


vve have the promise, that “He that goeth 
forth with toil unto the measure of sacrifice 
and suffering, bearing precious seed, shall 
doubtless come again with rejoicing bringing 
his sheaves with him.” 


152 




VIII 


the Refor 
matien of 
Criminals 


That the problem of reforming 
habitual criminals in penal institu¬ 
tions is a hopeless one, even in the 
face of incredulity and comparative 
failure thus far, is a proposition not yet to be 
handed over as the decision either of experi¬ 
ence or of the best thought of the best minds. 
We have always heard—and this ought to 
keep up our spirits—that there is no person 
to whom there is no avenue, if only it can be 
found, of beneficent approach. It may be 
true that there is now and then a person so de¬ 
praved that we say, whether rightly or not, 
that there are no resources of kindness and 
wisdom available for reaching him. It may 
be that, gathered out of all the population of 
our country, these solitary exceptions to ac¬ 
cessibleness to better influence may constitute 
a multitude of a quarter of a million, and that 
these are the vast baleful army of our crim¬ 
inals whom the nation has to contemplate as 
being out of the reach of recovery. It is cer¬ 
tain that the judgment is ncft warranted unless 

153 


Uisions of a Citizen 

the utmost resources of approach have been 
extended. I appeal to what consequences are 
involved in leaving the problem unsolved, as 
reason for hope while the last limit of effort 
and study is not yet reached. These crim¬ 
inals are under the influence, I know, of the 
worst impulses of which human nature is sus¬ 
ceptible. They are destitute of the principles 
that ordinarily hold men in social order. They 
have resisted the influences on which only 
men have to rely for making them good, and 
have put themselves under influences which 
have no other effect than to make them bad. 
They have resisted the most beneficent forces 
this world has with which to soften and 
beautify human conduct, and stand between 
the man and the brute. Civil society, the 
warm instincts of social friendship, had noth¬ 
ing mighty enough to hold them. They have 
turned their backs on human life, thrown all 
life’s real good behind them, and chosen 
the way downward which Cain chose 
before them, until it is the very pre¬ 
rogative of their nature to be aliens 
from the race and natural enemies of man¬ 
kind. And to these things they are absolute¬ 
ly abandoned, with little or nd conscious pfro- 

154 


/ 


Society and Reform 

test from within against it. They have en¬ 
tered into covenant with one another, the 
bonds of their animal depravation, by an un¬ 
natural misuse of name, riveted by the clutch 
of an organism from whose ranks it is im¬ 
possible, if they at any relenting moment 
would, to extricate themselves. They are in 
league with death. And they are all this in 
virtue, in increasing measure, of lineage, be¬ 
ing natural heirs to their condition, heirs—the 
saddest fact we can contemplate—of a vicious 
mental inhumanity, which has concomitant 
with it a vicious strain in the circulation of 
their blood, so as to make, almost, crime their 
destiny. And the anathemas of society are 
against them, and they hear these anathemas! 
But do the American people know—have you 
told them so that they know it—that there are 
not less than three hundred thousand of these 
people in their midst, that when one falls from 
the ranks another takes his place and that 
their number doubles every ten years—that 
ten years from to-night there will be six hun¬ 
dred thousand in their midst, and at the end 
of the next ten years upwards of a million? 

I have referred to a company of thirty boys 

I s'aw 1 in the TomhS last summer. As I lotfk- 

155 


Visions of 4 Citizen 


ed into their faces without sentiment, stolid, 
morally oblivious, and watched their sly and 
crafty look, it seemed to me that the power 
which would avail to change those boys into 
beings possessing virtue, and make good 
American citizens of them, might be reckoned 
as being one of the primary dominant forces 
of the universe. I looked one day for a half 
hour at a thousand men at their dinner in 
the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island, and as 
the panorama of mingled animalism, crafti¬ 
ness and doggedness passed before me, the 
burden which society was there shown to have 
to wrestle with appalled me. 

That, after all, however, the recovery of 
this army of our criminals is not to be aban¬ 
doned, but is going to have a measure of re¬ 
lief, there are some considerations which en¬ 
courage us to think more than possible. There 
are powers in nature which we see manifesting 
themselves occasionally in a remarkable man¬ 
ner in the producing of effects so vast as to 
create the suspicion that underneath are lurk¬ 
ing latent capabilities of those powers which 
may be at length drawn upon as a common 
provision, in still greater measure even, for 
meeting the ordinary needs Of life. One of 


Society and Reform 

these powers we view almost with awe is 
electricity, which we are already yoking in 
harness and putting under us for wings in 
every day’s concerns. Who knows that such 
a latent power, as waiting to be used in the 
warfare man is waging for his lost brothers, 
is not suggested in the unusual examples of 
personal influence on record? When such 
men as John Howard and Jerry McAuley 
and such women as Elizabeth Fry and Flor¬ 
ence Nightingale and Clara Barton and Mrs. 
Jeremiah Porter have lived, who shall say that 
in the energy of personal devotion to the re¬ 
covery of criminals, if not in masses, yet man 
by man, there are not latent reasons for ex¬ 
pecting that a new day may yet dawn in the 
problem of penal treatment? I do not mean 
to underestimate the work which has been 
done already by the many noble men engaged 
now or heretofore in this field. It is possible 
that in the exercise of personal influence, for 
which they have been remarkable, too large 
masses of criminal life have caused the in¬ 
fluence to be too little concentrated upon the 
individual, and that the experiment will have 
to be tried, as is coming to be thought more 
successful in education, in criminal institu- 

i57 


Uisions of i Citizen 


tions smaller and more numerous, where con¬ 
stant and more immediate personal fellowship 
will be practicable. Possibly, as the capabili¬ 
ties of personal influence are seen to be more 
worthy of being emphasized, a tendency will 
be checked to substitute for vital forces, which 
are ever more expensive to patience and to 
soul, method and machinery, which are the 
easily suggested supplanters. If the time 
should ever come, which we all ardently look 
for, when the virtues of unofficial citizenship 
shall be willing to assume the burdens of the 
brother’s keeper, there will therein be fur¬ 
nished to penal institutions a needed supple¬ 
ment which will help to solve the problem. 

I, for one, am not willing to surrender the 
possibility as a ground of forecasting a better 
future; and permit me to suggest that it be¬ 
comes us to look in this direction for the bet¬ 
terment of our prison administration. If we 
can teach our children love for all things, 
both great and small, and especially for men 
even in the person of criminals, wicked and 
vile though they be, the solving of the prob¬ 
lem will be brought far nearer to being ac¬ 
complished. 


158 


Society and Reform 

The analogy of the wonderful perfectness 
with which many other of the arrearages of 
man s social needs have been made up, leads 
to the same conclusion, that we must not allow 
ourselves to accept the present state of our 
criminal people as never to be improved. If 
the spectacle had been placed before our minds 
forty, or even thirty years ago, of the vastly 
extended system of states constituting our 
Union, overflowing with a vigorous and eager 
population, whose industries force them on to 
the multiplying of their harvests on every acre 
of territory and their manufacture in every 
center of habitation, and then the question had 
been put to us concerning the achievement of 
the means of transfer by which the carriage to 
and fro of this sixty millions of persons, and 
the exchange and distribution of these im¬ 
mense products, might be accomplished, so 
that each citizen will be instantly where he 
wishes to be, and the industry of each will 
avail to providing the exact sufficiency for 
every other, and of every article, so that no 
one will have in his possession either too little 
or too much; what resources of human energy 
and sagacity could we have discovered exist¬ 
ing anywhere to warrant a hopeful answer? 

i59 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizcit 


But the exigency has been well met. In this 
manner man, availing himself of laws of pro¬ 
cedure which, when the time has come, he 
had found waiting for him, has been doing 
wonderful things, with which we are almost 
too familiar to be conscious of them. And if 
there have been thus far in the department of 
material thing appliances for meeting physical 
needs, which they have not all been, are we 
at liberty to suppose that like conquests over 
circumstances are not to invade the kingdom 
of man’s moral requirements? It may be that 
the imminent problem of our history thus far 
has been the initial one of adjusting the phys¬ 
ical conditions upon which any higher life is 
possible. Grant all this. But are not the 
energies of society ever to be carried over into 
the domain of its higher concerns, to build 
up in those more important fields the things 
which constitute the beauty and the dignity of 
life? Are we always to be laying foundations 
and building scaffolding? Can any one help 
thinking that the ultimate and splendid career 
of the American people is opening up in the 
realms of intelligent, individual and social vir¬ 
tue? Nor are such achievements entirely 

wanting to inspire us. The thought is stirring 

160 


Society and Reform 

in many noble natures. It is the inspiration 
of the effort for the Sabbath, for the crushing 
of the tippling-house and the drink-mill. It 
is the meaning of the Red Cross of the battle¬ 
field and the White Cross of the work-shop, 
the school-room and the street. And now, 
with all this prodigious aggressiveness of our 
gallant day, is the congestive wickedness of 
our criminals to be deemed sacred against 
its invading charge? The attitude appropriate 
for such an era as we live in is that of ex¬ 
pectancy and resolute persistence. Shall our 
criminals only defy our Nineteenth Century? 

161 








mature 


Did you fail to see Jupiter and Mars 
and did you behold the majesty of 
Orion, and did you see Him who can 
unloose Orion’s bands? 


It is all a parable, and all man’s wis 
dom is to listen and obey. 


Letters . 














I 


“Miss-! Miss-! I know 

T Know a place where the ground is just 
a Place yellow with buttercups!” and his 
black eyes were as big as saucers 
as he said it. “And I know another place 
where the ground is just white with shooting 
stars!” And his big eyes grew bigger. Those 
buttercups and those shooting stars will be 
the saving of that blessed little fellow, if he 
is rightly led and taken care of. But the 
teacher cannot do it alone, even with the fas¬ 
cination of the flowers. True 

4 4 Bright and glorious is the Revelation 

Written all over this great world of ours 

vj/ - */ 

m 

In these stars of earth, these golden flowers.” 

But the world is strong and very fascinat¬ 
ing, too, and the dear children must have 
help from home—father, mother, sister, as 
well as from these teachers. They must not 
expect that their children will be kept from 
wrong unless the people in the home help. It 

165 




Uisiotts of a Citizen 


will never be allowed by Providence that those 
who are morally responsible for another will 
be permitted to do their work for that other by 
proxy. The moral force of a teacher must— 
must, be wielded by the earnest and faithful 
moral force of the parent behind it. The Abra- 
hamic covenant has a very strict interpreta¬ 
tion. It does not read: “For I know that 
he will hire very good teachers to order his 
household after him." Go with that big-eyed 
and hot-hearted little boy or girl—both to¬ 
gether, where the ground is yellow with but¬ 
tercups and white with shooting stars, and 
slip it into his mind with brimming eyes that, 

“ Wondrous truths and manifold as wondrous 
God has written in those stars above ; 

Not less in the bright flowerets under us 
Stands the Revelation of His love. ’ ’ 

Oh! These children you parents send to 
school! Do help them by the might of home 
tenderness and of home example of how to 
live in the love of God and all His children and 
all the things which He has made. 

166 


X 


II 

I would like to suggest to my 
young friends that a good way of 
spending some of their quiet sum¬ 
mer hours is to take now and then, 
and not too seldom, some better of the Eng¬ 
lish poets into the woods or grove—upon a 
hill is likelier, for there the mind is more 
easily uplifted upon wings—and read, and 
read, and read much aloud. If you are a 
young lady you may take a young gentleman 
with you, and if you are a young gentleman 
you may take a young lady with you, pro¬ 
vided you will keep on reading just the same. 
But go often without any one with you, so as 
to be alone with the great poet. Take the 
best. Read Wordsworth—The Excursion. 
Read Tennyson—The Idylls of the King or 
In Memoriam. Be sure to read aloud. Soak 
your mind in them. If you are a boy, read 
The Lady of the Lake and Marmion and rollic 
in them. And be sure to commit some of the 
better passages of the poets to heart, not mere- 

167 


Uacatioit 

fiours 


Visions of a Citizen 


ly to memory—to heart. And again, in what 
are to you now the far off years they will 
find you, and will be wealth of thought, im¬ 
pulse, inspiration, to make life seem and be 
grand and splendid. If you find God with 
you in your solitude, as sooner or later you 
will be likely to, then you will have the vision 
which Moses had, the Burning Bush which 
was not consumed. 


168 


Ill 


A sudden change has come over all 
the Dear our fair commonwealth. It is in 
Children. t j ie vo j ces 0 f our children. Yes¬ 
terday they were in vacation; to¬ 
day they are in school. The transfiguration is 
more easily imagined than described. A good 
deal of the old is in the new; much of the new 
was in the old. But I would like to hear two 
phonographs, from one the voices of the chil¬ 
dren which were filling all the air two weeks 
ago and from the other the voices which are 
heard now—to listen to an hour of the one 
and then to an hour of the other. The chil¬ 
dren of Wisconsin in vacation, boys and girls, 
talking, and the children of Wisconsin now 
that school keeps. It would be the dear 
voices of children whom I sometimes think 
to be the most valuable of all our citizens still; 
but I have companied with trotting brooks, up 
among my native mountains, where waters 
flitted about over pebbly beds, tossed hither 
and thither by the slightest circumstance of 

169 


Qi$ion$ of a Citizen 


bend, or shallow, or stone, or leaping fish, 
sometimes flung backward and now aside, 
leaping into bubble and foam in a thousand 
hues from dark to light, always dancing, joy¬ 
ous, living, glad. Then the banks narrowed 
and the pebbled bottom sunk; intensity be¬ 
came energy, life concentrated momentum and 
the movement Doric. So with the life of the 
children of Wisconsin. If there is beauty be¬ 
yond all the beauty of fairest flowers in child¬ 
hood at play, in childhood when it bows its 
shining head under the baptism of coming 
realities and makes willing surrender of itself 
to the responsibilities of life, one wonders 
whether the poet speaks truly. 

“ Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 

Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
Upon the growing boy, 

But he beholds the light and whence it flows— 

He sees it in his joy. 

The youth, who daily farther from the East 
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, 

And by the vision splendid, 

Is on his way attended. 

At length the man perceives it die away 
And fade into the light of common day. ’' 

No! With human souls also, the evening 
and the morning are the first day. Heaven 

170 


nature 

comes in with splendid manhood and woman¬ 
hood. 

Dear children of Wisconsin may no hollow 
word of teacher be heard by you all this year. 
May you meet all sweet appreciation and help¬ 
fulness. May great souls feed you with the 
fine wheat of great purposes. You are our 
treasures, the coming citizens of Wisconsin. 
We bless you and bid you welcome to your 
dignities and your burdens. 

171 


IV 


The children are now back in their 
nature— schoolrooms after the short vaca¬ 
te teacher bon - m the enc j 0 f blustering- March. 

It is not any disloyalty to the 
schoolroom to say that, from this time on, if 
the best schoolroom is not out of doors, out of 
doors ought to be made very much of as a 
schoolroom. What child has not heard, and 
heard Mrs. Heman’s “Voice of Spring.” 

“ I come, I come ! Ye have called me long ; 

I come o’er the mountains with light and song ! 
Ye may trace my steps o’er the wakening earth, 
By the winds which tell of the violet’s birth, 

By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass, 

By the green leaves opening as I pass. ’ ’ 

I would not have had the wondrously ani¬ 
mating poem out of my mind in the last fifty 
years for the price of a great deal of valuable 
learning. Now is the time for the teacher 
to prove how much he has of the power of 
interpretation, for after all this is about the 

172 


nature 


business of a teacher—to reveal to the pupil 
what secrets there are hidden behind and be¬ 
tween what the pupil sees and hears and reads. 
No more likely thing was ever said than St. 
Bernard said—and Bernard of Clairvaux was 
a mighty man and by his moral majesty gov¬ 
erned Kings and Popes: “I have learned 
more from the maples and beeches of Clair¬ 
vaux than from all books and men.” I do 
not know that any set of questions for ex¬ 
amination of teachers makes anything of this; 
but I certainly would not, of preference, em¬ 
ploy a teacher for spring and summer school, 
who had not been deep in the school of the 
woods, the springs of water, who had not 
shouted from the uplands and roamed on the 
shores of lakes and rivers, in life’s blessed early 
forenoon. They may have Botany and Geol¬ 
ogy and Biology, and it is all good; but they 
are too analytic and scientific for our present 
purpose. To be a companion of the woods, 
the springs of water, the deep mysterious ra¬ 
vines, the rivers, and—where possible—the 
mountains, which 

‘ ‘ Their great secrets bear and hide, 

Waiting the time 


173 


Uisions of a Citizen 


For which God’s purposes abide, 

Still and sublime, 

Patient through restless centuries 
Knowing the calm eternities, ’ ’ 

in the unstudied joy of friendships, as hearts 
of friends revel in the hearts of friends—the 
teacher who cannot swing wide the doors in 
his pupils to such companionship with nature 
has not learned to bring children to the herit¬ 
age they deeply need, nor will his own nature 
be enriched as it ought to be. I sat by Lake 
Michigan the other morning with a companion 
who had blessed my mid-career of life years 
ago with her young and laughing girlhood. 
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “What do you 
see in the lake which you find so beautiful?” 
I asked. “A friend,” she thoughtfully con¬ 
cluded. I know a family of daughters, now 
women, who tell me that in their girlhood 
their father had the habit of going with them 
in the woods and making them acquainted with 
its fascinating love. I sometimes think that 
the best part of education is slipping through 
the fingers of our educational ingenuity. Any 
way, I advise the children—not to play the 
truant, but when they can, on holidays—to 
tramp in the woods, over the hills, through the 

i74 


nature 


deep valleys, haunt the springs that “run 
among the hills,” and learn to be at home with 
nature—take Bryant and Mrs. Hemans, 
Scott’s Lady of the Lake, Wordsworth, with 
them as their teacher. Now is the golden 
opportunity. Learn to love them and they 
will widen and greaten you, make you rich 
and strong and supple, and give you a blessed 
friend. 


i75 


V 


^ In the administration of the 

Preservation Athenian commonwealth, there 
Of forests were, among others, two elements 
of public treasure to which special 
value was attached: the mines of silver on the 
southern promontory of Attica, and the trees. 
When the mines of Laurium were exhausted, 
Athens found herself wanting in resources for 
contending successfully with jealous neigh¬ 
bors; and so much did her resources depend 
on the careful husbandry of trees, that it was 
the first effort of her great adversary, Sparta, 
in attacking her, to destroy them. 

In a remarkable degree we Americans have 
gone astray, even from the earlier practices 
of our kinsmen across the seas, in the care of 
woodlands. Coming upon a continent, a large 
portion of which, no doubt, was clothed with 
forests, it has hardly ever occurred to our 
people that the woods, stretching unbroken as 
a barrier to the progress of population, held 
or would hold to us any other relation than 
as an element of nature to be overcome and 

176 


nature 

eradicated. It was so with the destructive 
mountain torrents and the dark forests of 
early Greece on the confines of Europe, as 
civilization set its foot upon the new shores, 
to challenge its occupancy, the subjection of 
which elemental forces was a work so difficult 
and so excellent, that the deification of Her¬ 
cules as its representative was deemed only 
a fitting reward. With less endowment of 
poetic imagination, but with the same uncon¬ 
sciousness of the husbandry of this one of na¬ 
ture’s gifts, in all this earlier portion of our 
history we have had little thought other than 
of some advantage that lay beyond our for¬ 
ests; and, if we have not sought only to de¬ 
stroy them and have them out of the way— 
which has largely been the case—we have 
given almost no thought to sparing them ac¬ 
cording to the kind purpose of nature, as one 
of the aids to a higher national life. 

It is a strange and wonderful thing when 
we reflect upon it, the manner in which a gen¬ 
eration of settlers, like those who have taken 
possession of the goodly heritage of Wiscon¬ 
sin, enter upon their privilege and avail them¬ 
selves of its advantages. Instead of assuming 
with careful deliberateness the opportunities 

177 


Ui$iott$ of 4 Citizen 


of their goodly inheritance and, putting them¬ 
selves in alliance with the generous provisions 
which are furnished them rather as a trust 
than as a conquest, they march by assault into 
the scenes of their chosen abode much as the 
army of Tamerlane or Ghengis Khan put its 
destructive foot upon Europe and southwest¬ 
ern Asia. They find a land friendly in the pro¬ 
ductiveness of its soil, a land of mountains 
and beautiful plains and rivers and forests and 
sweet lakes and brave inland seas. They do 
soon learn, after many rough encounters, that 
the soil cannot be trifled with, but, to be their 
friend, must be wooed into their alliance. The 
mountains withstand their onset, 

“ And their deep secrets bear and hide, 

Waiting the time 
For which God’s purposes abide, 

Still and sublime, 

Patient through restless centuries 
Knowing the calm eternities. * ’ 

They cannot conquer the sea: 

“Upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man’s ravage save his own, 

When in a moment, like a drop of rain, 

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown. ’ ’ 

178 


nature 


They cannot contrive to stay the rivers and 
send them back to the hills they have left be¬ 
hind. But the forests, the silent, princely, au¬ 
gust, awful forests, are unable to resist them, 
and only late they learn that the perishing of 
the forests touched the heart of nature and that 
the avenger is at the core of their civic welfare. 


Wisconsin owes it to her busy and tired 
children and to the wayfarer from afar,—to 
keep her forest glades sacred to weary feet 
and overstrained hearts—merchants, students, 
officers of state, artisans, all, in the midsummer 
of the year, to rest and recreate, and all the 
year to feel from far the baptism of the re¬ 
membered stillness. 

‘ ‘ The calm shade 

Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze, 

That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 
To thy sick heart. ’ * 


179 



Uisions of a Citizen 


The strain of life is growing heavier. The 
motto of our state commonwealth will not let 
us stay, and is prophetic. As we go “For¬ 
ward” and wrestle with our great destiny we 
shall need the forests of Wisconsin, tended, 
beautified, replenished, cherished. Let us give 
them to ourselves and to our children as a 
great benediction! 


And speaking no longer of forests, why is 
not this the auspicious year for inaugurating in 
good earnest the enriching and beautifying of 
our Wisconsin everywhere with trees? Who 
has ever dreamed of the beauty with which our 
commonwealth and homes and farms could be 
diademed? No Titian or Giulio Romano or 
Claude Lorraine ever did so much for mak¬ 
ing his canvas immortal by the magic of col¬ 
ors as we can easily do for Wisconsin, by se¬ 
lecting suitable trees from nature’s garden and 

flinging their banners of green and gold and 

180 



nature 


crimson across the canvas of our farms and 
roadsides and slopes of hill and valley. This 
is the precise meaning of our annual festival of 
arbor day. Painting seems to be having a 
new revival. Architecture is returning to im¬ 
part the grace and dignity of her parable to 
the inner life of home and gathering places in 
city and village. Ever more and more the 
world that is open to eye and ear is being 
taken up by us into company to talk with us 
in its expressive language, now at length bet¬ 
ter interpreted, on our Emmaus pilgrimage 
of life, and give us better insight into things 
invisible. Nature has never been to us so 
blessed a gospel as now. Why not invoke the 
art of making all Wisconsin beautiful, our 
roadside beautiful and the whole face of the 
landscape beautiful, in whatsoever way the 
blended interests of beauty and convenience 
determine, with the elm, the maple, the walnut, 
the oak, the pine, with their emerald soothing 
the fervors of the summer and with their 
brighter hues cheering the growing gray of 
the somber autumn, the birds finding their 
homes of song and progeny in the branches, 
and the feet df little children lo'ving td go to 

181 


Ui$iott$ of a gitfeeit 


them to build, in their shadows, castles of joy 
to hang in the halls of memory, as we built 
castles in the shadow of trees for our joy when 
we were children? 


182 


VII 


fliagara 


Niagara is an old story, but Niag¬ 
ara never grows old. It is a com¬ 
plex system of wonders. The ocean 
is a unit of awful grandeur though 
it is multitudinous. Niagara is manifold and 
one must go everywhere and see everything in 
order to get it all, and when you have all the 
elements then it will tax you to put them all 
together and make of them the mighty whole. 
The awful chasm with its overhanging cliffs; 
the bridges which match with their human 
skill nature’s vastness; the rocks which underlie 
all and seem to be the pillars of the universe; 
the bright clouds which hover like admiring 
spirits over the scene; the emerald shores and 
islands. But all this is only the setting of 


Niagara. Niagara is its inhabitant. In the 
midst is the everywhere sovereignly advancing 
flood, as if all things were ordered only to 
witness and make illustrious its imperial 
march. Beginning at the head of the rapids 
with sudden plunge to a lower level, in two 
broad columns it deploy’s to the right and to 

183 


Visions of a Citizen 


the left, embracing the islands as a very little 
thing. A wide wilderness of tumultuous 
waves, sinking perceptibly into subdued mood 
as if hushed by the thought of the impending 
catastrophe. Then the deliberate and awful 
solemnity of the descent into the abyss, and 
the sullen flow of the waters down the gloomy 
gorge into the mysterious world beyond. 
Wonderful parable of human life! There is one 
great word out of the invisible world he has 
never listened to who has not seen Niagara, 
and he has not seen Niagara who has not 
heard in it a voice out of the invisible world. I 
can never think of Niagara as other than a 
living being. Its passing before me seems the 
passing of a Sdul through the tragedy of its 
destiny. 


184 


VIII 


I am sure that no volume written 

by man can teach us more things 

or m i , ° 

mountains* we neec * t0 know than the moun¬ 
tains. The poets have only learned 
some small portion of their lore. To speak 
not at all of these things but only as for a pic¬ 
ture;—for a picture I have thought that the 
ocean was inexhaustible in its variousness. It 
is beyond the art of the painter, for it runs 
through all the moods of smile and frown, of 
storm and calm, 


“ Forever changing and the same forever. ’ * 

But the wall of these mountains is a canvas 
on which the Divine Artist paints in one brief 
day visions which to look upon make that day 
forever memorable in the history of one’s soul. 
I have seen them all opened in the recesses 
of their caverns so that one could look far, far 
away into the depths; genial and friendly as 


♦Professor Blaisdell was born In Canaan, New Hampshire, 
and spent his youth among the mountains of that state. They 
exercised upon him a profound and life-long influence. It was 
characteristic of him that in later life he purchased and held as 
a public park the highest point of land in the neighborhood of 
his Wisconsin hbme. 

185 



Uisions of a mm 


the home of our childhood, every line sharp 
and flashing, slashed and flecked with clouds 
like passing ships, and all painted in colors 
which are vouchsafed to mortal eye only in 
the atmosphere of mountains,—spread wide, 
lifted up high, hung between earth and heav¬ 
en. I have seen dark storm-clouds flung 
like the baldrick of a warrior about their cen¬ 
tral altitude, the base of the mountains seeming 
a part of our familiar though more strenuous 
world, their summits, either continuous or 
broken apart by intervening mists, hanging in 
deep ethereal blue. 

“ Dread ambassadors from earth to heaven.” 

I have seen all the base of the mighty wall 
wrapped in heavy silver-edged cumulus cloud 
now, and now in feathery mist, and all the 
summits set apart and floating like islands of 
jacinth in the blue of the upper sky. I have 
seen them decked in the tracery of wisps of 
spray more subtle and delicate than what 
adorns the beauty of a bride which would 
float to and fro across the ineffable purple of 
their front, now dissolving, now regathering, 
and now resolving into all forms of bewitch¬ 
ing charm, gliding hither and thither up to 

18B 


nature 


the summits, unveiling and veiling patches of 
the splendid background, one after another. 
I have seen the whole deep conspiracy of 
grandeur in a warmth of coloring which 
shames the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, 
overhung with a festoon of breaking storm 
clouds, 

“ Looming bastions fringed with fire.” 

Oh, the charm and awe of it surpasses words; 
we sit awed and confess that the only artist 
is the God that made the mountains. “The 
strength of the hills is His also.” 

But amid it all, the rhythm of the swaying 
seas and the silence of the steadfast mountains, 
I hear one voice which says to me: “Son of 
man, stand up upon thy feet like a man, for I 
have somewhat to say unto thee. I bring thee 
a message. Thy earthly home is not here. 
My ministry is for the sons of men. Go hence 
and let thy ministry also be to them. All we 
are rewards. The Son of Man came not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister.’ Thou 
wast made not for mountains or seas—they 
are only my parable to thee—but for thy fel¬ 
low-men.^ 


i3 7 


IX 


The view from the top of moun- 
OftbC^ tains is very unlike the view of 
mountains mountains from their foot. The 
former exhilarates; the mind is 
elevated, as on wings, and enlarged to some¬ 
thing of the expansiveness of the scene spread 
out before it. The effect is something like that 
of a Homeric rythm or of martial music. By 
the latter view one is subdued into the level of 
awe. He is confronted with something great¬ 
er than himself, impending over him. Perhaps 
in time, or by virtue of a mind favorably con¬ 
structed, he at length becomes inured td the 
spirit that is expressed in the mighty volume, 
and learns that it is before him not to oppress 
and tyrannize but rather to teach and inspire; 
then it becomes a strong and blessed friend, 
as when, in childhood, we were taken up into 
the arms of a venerated father and we knew 
him, and strength and joy came into us from 
him evermore. 

Watching through the whole day from the 
clear sunrise until the mighty forms disappear 

188 


nature 

into the dimness of the weird moonlight, what 
endless variety of colorings and shadings and 
enfoldings and disclosures meet the eye! How 
beautiful the shadows of the clouds, 

‘ ‘ Like ships upon the sea ! * * 

No great, wise, benign, human face has so 
manifold and expressive change of features. 
These mountains seem to be alive and to look 
sad and gay, to frown and smile, to have deep 
and weighty, and, then again, blithe and win¬ 
some, thoughts. Nor does the vastness of 
their volume make them dumb things; it rath¬ 
er emphasizes their “various language.” One 
is not afraid of them because of their awful 
magnitude; he is rather inclined to draw near¬ 
er to them; give himself up into their tender¬ 
ness, and forgetting their ruggedness nestle 
in their embrace. Their words come to melt 
the frost about the heart, and soothe us, while 
they strengthen, and make us disposed to be 
gentle, as they themselves seem to be. Be¬ 
tween a day upon the mountains and a day 
in sight of mountains, one cannot easily 
choose. Each is half of one blessed whole 
of privilege, even as loftiness and lowliness 
combine to constitute the complete nobleness 

189 


Uisions of a Citizen 


of mind. But to see the giant shadows float 
and toil and climb and sleep upon the uplift¬ 
ed continents of sunlit mountains, mingling 
their somber effects with the varied hues of 
vegetation, dropping into the enfoldings and 
recesses, and enshrouding the bold headlands, 
through summer day into a moonlit summer 
night! A lady I met in Beloit not long ago— 
herself a daughter of New England—said to 
me: “I prefer the prairie to the mountains.” 
Yes, for a place to do one’s life work in, the 
prairies of southern Wisconsin or northern 
Illinois; but for the privilege of vision and 
impression and instruction and inspiration, the 
mountains. 

Along this very road that I have been stroll¬ 
ing over, I came forty-six years ago at the end 
of an eighty miles’ walk, a tired boy, alone, led 
by an eager spirit, in mid-afternoon of a mid- 
June day, and, staying only to supply my ex¬ 
hausted commissariat, I entered that narrow 
footpath into the forest, to spend a never-to- 
be-forgotten night of starlit splendor alone 
upon Mt. Washington, the Mecca of my hope. 
With what beating heart, as I recalled the 
picture of that boy with his hopes and un- 

190 


nature 


formed character and perils, climbing in un¬ 
conscious fearlessness that long way, with all 
that has intervened of change and liability and 
mistake and God’s kind leading through priv¬ 
ileges numberless and friendships priceless and 
hope measureless, did I put my foot a second 
time into the way of that ascent! I climbed 
its first half mile as I had the day before de¬ 
scended from the summit its last half mile— 
until the level shadows of the overhanging 
woods admonished me that memory must fold 
her wing and the beating heart be quieted. 

I returned by the same road to my hotel, 
with the mountains still looking down upon 
me, reminding me that the strength of the 
hills, which is His—out of whose guardian¬ 
ship the boy has never been allowed to stray 
—will also keep the man until the lengthening 
shadows of life are succeeded by the sunrise 

of a day on which the sun goes not down. 

191 


X 


I am sitting on the top of New 
England and the whole land is, fig¬ 
uratively at least, spread out be¬ 
neath me. What I can see of it, a 
circle the circumference of which is a thou¬ 
sand miles—as far as from here to Chicago— 
makes a wonderful picture to look upon on a 
perfectly clear mid-July day. I am looking 
westward, of course, whither the course of em¬ 
pire takes its way and where Chicago is. Out 
to my right, in the near, lift themselves, shoul¬ 
der upon shoulder, Mts. Jefferson, Adams and 
Madison, Mt. Washington standing across an 
interval from them, significantly apart, alone 
among the mountains, as Washington among 
men. Down to my left, across a deeper chasm, 
withdraw themselves to the commoner level 
Monroe, Franklin, Jackson, Clinton and Web¬ 
ster, separated, however, by the deep gorge 
of the Notch from all beyond—altogether, the 
Presidential range. Behind me is the broad 
east with its multitudinous interest, its valley 
of the Androscoggin to the northerly and its 

192 


On top of 
the 

mountains 


nature 


valley of the Saco to the southerly, its many 
lakes ending below in the beautiful Winne- 
pisscogee—sacred with the memory of a col¬ 
lege vacation ramble with one whose beautiful 
home in Chicago now always welcomes me— 
flashing under the morning sun its wilderness¬ 
es of mountains, and away off, eighty miles, 
the Atlantic about Portland. But to the west, 
look far, far down the massive slopes beneath 
you, and in the foreground are two dark-wood¬ 
ed giants one beyond the other, broad-breast¬ 
ed and somber. Beyond and around them, 
themselves now in sunlight, stretches the vast 
luminous plain not to be described, flanked 
and flecked and interlined by similar moun¬ 
tains, seemingly boundless in its receding dis¬ 
tances, if it does not slope up into Heaven. 
Reach as far as you can with your eye, and it 
rests for its utmost bound on the sharp edge of 
the Green Mountains of Vermont and the 
Adirondacks of New York. To the north the 
mountains of Canada; to the south Monad- 
nock, the peerless, 

“ Kearsarge 

“ Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun,” 

Cardigan, on which, when a boy, I had the 
sense of being lost upon a mountain and the 

i93 


Uisions of a Citizen 


pride of pluckily finding myself again; Ascut- 
ney, far goal of my boyish rambles where, 
with my class of Academy graduates, I spent 
a wild night years on years ago with blazing 
forests for our camp fire and tempestuous 
shouting for our music—dear fellows, where 
are they now?—and away across the border of 
Massachusetts. Strong, deep, quiet beauty is 
in the view—blue and purple, blotched with 
forests, silver-threaded with rivers and jeweled 
with lakes, with its many villages full of human 
lives, its lines of railway—all covered with the 
bluest, cloud-flecked sky. Oh, that you all 
could come and, for one such a day, look, 
free from all your cares, upon its face of Divine 
benignity. 

I made the ascent yesterday—I am hum¬ 
bled in confessing it—by the railway. Of all 
the forms of belittlement, which man has la¬ 
boriously let himself down to, none is such 
an abysmal reach of these degenerate days as 
ascending a mountain like this by being car¬ 
ried up by the stupid force of steam. Think 
of William Tell submitting to be boosted up 
the Righi by a locomotive! Picture to your¬ 
self that youth, who 

“ Bears a banner with a strange device,” 

194 


nature 


riding up the Alps on a steam engine, shout¬ 
ing from the top of the tender, “Excelsior!” 
It was to me especially a matter of deep mor¬ 
tification, for forty-six years ago last month, a 
boy, alone, I came up yonder crest by that 
simple footpath I can just discern along the 
entire range—a ten-mile climb—and slept un¬ 
companioned underneath an overhanging rock 
just neighboring to the one on which my now 
ignominious feet are disgracefully standing. I 
hear men speak of the disciplinary tuition of 
mountains; but it does not come by being car¬ 
ried up them. I have a great mind to go down 
and climb up the old path again, to make it 
sure to myself that every vestige of the old 
heroic period is not wholly departed out of 
me. 

But, nevertheless, I was brought up, and 
with a blithe company of delightful Raymond 
excursionists from Boston; they coming at 
night and vanishing with their pleasant chat¬ 
ter in the morning. And we were all made 
very happy with a sky clear from clouds, as it 
is now. The sun set! The sun rose! Oh, 
when it went the mountain-strewn plain be¬ 
came a somber, billowy sea, like a heart whom 

friends have deserted. When it came—molten 

i95 


Uisiotis of a Citizen 

gold—the sea became the warm earth—home 
again, and all its seeming billows were full of 
laughter. “The little hills rejoiced on every 
side.” And now not a sound can I hear but 
the whisper of a gentle, northern wind—sure¬ 
ly some one breathing. I seem to be fronted 
with the face of a great, wise friend—too great¬ 
ly wise for me to more than feebly compre¬ 
hend. It is the look of Him who loves the 
pure in heart, who only can see God. 

196 


Cbe jfattb 


One does not so much need to 
listen as to lean. 

—A Class-room Talk. 









I 


The difficulty any one feels in re- 
3C$U$* ^ producing the figure of Jesus as 
it is drawn in the evangelical rec¬ 
ord only illustrates the difficulty of 
originating such a figure. We cannot ade¬ 
quately describe him even after he has been 
delineated by the four-fold biography. The 
effort of Raphael to paint him was a discour¬ 
agement and Michael Angelo never dared to 
try it. He is utterly unapproachable even now 
after the world has had him on its mind for 
eighteen centuries. We can only at best de¬ 
scribe him by a generalization from particular 
incidents which we find recorded. The finer 
features of his figure it is impossible to state 
to ourselves. The problem is much more than 
to reproduce the concept of the most admi¬ 
rable sunset. Unless we try to describe the 
sunset through all its glowing process, from 
the first faint flush that falls upon the after¬ 
noon of the day through the kindling and con¬ 
summate glory to the deeper and more ex¬ 
pressive, but even more impenetrable cadence 

199 


Ui$ion$ or 4 Citizen 

of its close we cannot in any sense understand 
the difficulty. The first thing we might speak 
of about Jesus Christ is his strength—I mean 
the strength of character. Among all the men 
that have lived there is none that equals him in 
this regard. There have been men who have 
pushed along narrow lines of procedure with 
tremendous and almost irresistible urgency. 
Napoleon, Caesar, pressed their way to empire 
and obstacles were overcome, but Christ’s 
whole life was the theater and product of a 
strong purpose. He conquered the world 
without and he conquered the world within. 
There is an impression that to stand against 
the purpose of that person would be to be 
overcome and crushed. And its strength is 
especially illustrated in the fact that it held 
itself within the limitations of a definite pur¬ 
pose. He came for a definite purpose and that 
purpose nothing could gainsay. And this 
strength is all the more forcibly illustrated 
in the fact that it was quiet, noiseless. He did 
not strive nor cry. Like all the other great 
forces which are determinate in the universe, 
his energy was undemonstrative. He never 
seemed to have had turbulent moments when 

he was moved beyond self-control, never mo- 

200 


Cfte im 


ments of giving in. Strong, steadfast, undis¬ 
turbed person, whether he stood before Roman 
soldiers who, because of his majesty, fell at his 
feet as dead men, or before Pilate, and was 
manifestly king of the situation, or could not 
be dissuaded from going up to Jerusalem to 
be crucified, or steadfastly resisted the hosan¬ 
nas of the multitude calling him to be their 
king! Such unabated moral strength from be¬ 
ginning to end, yielding to no passion, but 
calm as the sun in his passage across the 
heavens, seems to be beyond Caesar or Napo¬ 
leon, or any other being. 


And you will take notice that this is the 
strength of principle. We do not detect in 
Jesus anything like subjection to impulse save 
as impulse is subordinate to a settled law 
which he has adopted. It is the beauty of his 
character that all its impulses are organ¬ 
ized and working in their proper harmony. 
No man was ever fuller of the sensibilities 


201 



Uisions of a Citizen 


than he. You cannot name one of the normal 
constitutional sensibilities and say that he 
lacked it. I would like to have the experiment 
made of studying the pathology of Christ in 
this respect. I think we should be surprised 
to find true of him in respect to his sensitive 
nature the words: “Nothing human is for¬ 
eign to me.” 

If Robert Burns had put his rich and appre¬ 
ciative nature to work upon this New Testa¬ 
ment figure he would have found him his ideal¬ 
ly human brother. But the peculiarity of it all 
is that these feelings are so subordinated, so 
thoroughly organized, the rectoral, the rela¬ 
tional, the suppeditary, so in their place and so 
subordinated to the settled law and principle 
of his life, that they attract no attention. It is 
like the statue of the Greek artist. Nothing is 
salient to attract attention; it is a perfect har¬ 
mony, the harmony of a personage ordered in 
principle and law. 


Another thing which comes to mind is the 
ethical subordination of this personage. It 

202 



Cbc Taiib 


is a life that proceeds in subjection to duty. 
You know there are with us very many things 
under the outward surface which no one 
knows but ourselves that lessen our self-re¬ 
spect. We would not like to have the light 
turned in and no man carries a perfectly open 
face always. We know enough of any man we 
see to read in his face and outward life that 
between him and the perfectly ordered moral 
life there is a wide gulf. Now you read the 
story of Jesus and look him in the face and 
see if you can look him down. It does seem 
true as he says: No man convinces me of sin. 
Our argument grows in strength. A man of 
consummate strength which is the strength of 
principle and not of impulse, and the strength 
of right, of ethical principle, is a difficult being 
to paint. 


203 


II 


the Divine 
holiness 
of 3e$u$ 


A most noticeable feature in the 
moral apprehensions of the old 
world is the absence in men’s 
minds of the idea of the strength 
of moral requirement. This was no doubt due 
in part to the fact that moral law was con¬ 
founded with so many other things. Even if the 
idea of law and obligation was present it was 
so blurred with other conceptions than that of 
moral law that it failed to produce in men’s 
minds the conception of strong obligation. 
The very color which belongs to law as obliga¬ 
tory and right as having binding force was 
obscure. It was confounded with beauty in 
the Greek mind; it was confounded with jural 
principle in the Roman mind; it was con¬ 
founded with utility in the universal mind, but 
right, moral requirement, as something dis¬ 
tinct, imperative, insistent, awful, men did not, 
even the best, clearly apprehend, and more¬ 
over the force of the claim this law made on 
human conduct was not apprehended. The 
tremendous volume of moral momentum with 

204 


Che Taitb 

which the mandate of the eternal reason dis¬ 
charges its requirement upon man’s soul they 
did not feel. 

The supreme pressure of the whole universe 
did not concentrate itself into that mandate. 
They did not say, they could not say: “Woe 
is me, for I am undone, because I do not keep 
the law.” Hence the idea of sacredness and 
the awful sacredness of the universe and of 
human life was not generated in their mind 
by their conception of the moral law. That 
is, the moral apprehensions of men were 
thin and with feeble requisition, more than 
permissive but less than absolutely uncom¬ 
promising. The consequence is that holiness 
is a conception foreign mainly to the ancient 
mind. There were no ideals that at all match 
the significance of the problem of man’s being; 
a holy law coming down on moral being with 
the avalanche of “Be ye holy, for I am holy,” 
men never felt. Man did not know himself be¬ 
cause he did not know, in the fulness of its 
strength, the law. This is largely due prob¬ 
ably to the fact already mentioned that there 
was no proper conception in men’s mind of the 
one God standing as an infinite will as the vin¬ 
dicator of the law originating in the reason. 

205 


Uisions of a Citizen 


The “thou oughtest” of the reason was not re¬ 
affirmed to the thought by the “thou must” of 
one personal and holy God. I look in vain 
through all ancient literature for any proper 
conception of the weight of the requirement of 
the moral law and man’s consequent proper es¬ 
timate of himself. 

But you know how it is with Jesus. The 
one law of duty had its ground in the eternal 
being of the holy God. God is the absolute 
law. Out of the unfathomable depths of His 
being proceeds the principle of all moral life. 
He in His will obeys it as it is announced in 
His reason, and, like the gravitation that holds 
all the infinite of stellar worlds and every parti¬ 
cle of matter, that divinely planted law organ¬ 
izes the whole world of citizenship far and 
near. Duty, morality, is divine and conduct 
is sacred only from the sacredness of God. 
Now where in all other thought do you find 
this truth? And that was in Jesus from the 
beginning. Where did he learn it? From 
human teachers by human traditions? There 
were no such. I should be in wonder if this 
consideration stood alone, but when we have 
considered all else I am constrained to say 
that he learned his lesson in another sphere. 

206 


Ill 


CbC Bible Reflection upon the subject must 
^ impress one with the honor a reve- 

sciOMSitess Iatlon » such as the Bible is, puts up¬ 
on the human consciousness. For, 

after all, it is only through convictions and 
sentiments in men, which from their intimate 
disclosure within ourselves we call conscious¬ 
ness, that God can, in moral procedure, come 
into relation with human intelligence. They 
are tentacles, with which our minds are fur¬ 
nished, that reach out toward the truth and the 
Divine can lay hold of for its use and make the 
vehicle of a new discovery, so that to him that 
hath it shall be given. It is an element of dig¬ 
nity in man that such affinities are found in 
him as to warrant God in approaching him 
with hope of being understood and appreci¬ 
ated. They are elements of affiliation with su¬ 
preme excellence, and we are in them remind¬ 
ed of the Psalmist’s words: “Thou madest 
him a little lower than the angels; Thou 
crownedst him with glory and honor.” In 
availing Himself of these avenues God takes 

207 


Visions of a Citizen 


us up into His fellowship, as it were, saying to 
us, as He did to the ancient Jewish prophet: 
“Stand up upon thy feet like a man, for I will 
speak unto thee.” It may well inspire a sense 
of human dignity, when we have so much to 
make us humble, that He recognizes in us 
beings capable of entertaining a portion of His 
counsels. Our best sentiments are set in 
movement and our holiest aspirations encour¬ 
aged by His thinking that we are able to weigh 
His thoughts and share—though only for our 
own benefit, and as he designs to disclose 
them to us—some of the secrets of His in¬ 
finite understanding. 


The truth is we dishonor ourselves most 
when we heap upon ourselves most honor. It 
is only when we recognize within us the splen¬ 
did elements of forfeited kingship that we find 
reason for shame and repentance. It is the 
disgrace of man that his depravity is in spite 
of principles within him which are always 
ready to render up their testimony against 

208 



Cbe faith 


him and furnish inlets to help from heaven. It 
is the clutch of the drowning man, which the 
hand of rescue may lay hold of, that is the 
truest signal of peril and helpfulness. Whether, 
however, we be making too much or too little 
of human consciousness, it is the only avenue 
through which the Bible accredits its revela¬ 
tion to the intelligence of those to whom it is 
addressed. If the Bible does not subject its 
credentials to the attestation of human con¬ 
sciousness according to the inevitable law 
which governs the revelations of mind to mind, 
the preciousness of this intercourse we are per¬ 
mitted to have with our Heavenly Father dis¬ 
appears; God dealeth not with us as with sons, 
and the family tie between earth and heaven 
is broken. When Commodore Perry cast an¬ 
chor in one of the ports of Japan in 1854 he 
was bearing with him a message from the 
President of this republic. The letter he car¬ 
ried had in it thoughts which could have had 
no other origin. The American flag was float¬ 
ing from the mast-head of his squadron. He 
came with a vast armament. His marines 
were deployed upon the shore to the sound of 
music which no Asiatic nation was able to 
create. Such were the evidences that the of- 

209 


Uisions of a Citizen 


fer of national amity and alliance he bore came 
from a majestic and mighty people across the 
seas, and the nation to whom they were 
brought were invoked to witness, by what 
they knew, that the claim made upon their 
confidence and consent was just. In like man¬ 
ner the Bible meets mankind with its creden¬ 
tials, and to the determination of their deeper 
nature is left the responsibility of finding in 
the salvation it announces a miracle of divine 
grace. 


The reason why most things in the Bible to 
many, and many things in the Bible to us all, 
are yet beyond reach is because there has not 
yet been enlisted in human experience the 
consciousness, now slumbering, which would 
serve us as the key for their interpretation. 
“Ears have they, but they do not hear.” If 
there had been no conviction of guilt and con¬ 
demnation and being lost, and no revulsion 
from the coming doom, there would have been 

210 



Cftc Taitb 


no meaning to the Philippian jailor in the 
answer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
thou shalt be saved.” He was conscious of 
his relation to divine holiness; he knew what 
Christ meant as Saviour through whom, 
though a sinner, he might be saved. No one 
passes with utter lightness over the seventh 
chapter of Romans, if he reads it at all, with¬ 
out some deepening of his moral mood, be¬ 
cause there is in every one some experience of 
the conflict which is there described. But as 
the consciousness of that conflict becomes de¬ 
veloped in more serious passages of life, the 
words of the apostle acquire new meaning, and 
when at length the mind becomes fully awak¬ 
ened, as it sometimes is, to the proportions of 
the struggle between good and evil, of which 
the human heart is the battlefield, and the 
lightings of God’s holiness come out from 
their hiding places, oh, what meaning in the 
words wherewith the apostle stills the trouble 
of his own soul! 


211 


Uisions of a Citizen 

It is, however, none the less true that only 
as the consciousness of men is in the attitude 
of living audience can the Bible speak other¬ 
wise than unintelligibly. Outreachings, in 
virtue of endowments which correlate with 
God, towards a divine friendship, of which 
earthly friendships are but a parable, explain 
those wonderful words, “Ye in Me, and I in 
you,” expressive of the friendship which exists 
between the Christian and his Savior. For 
such reason, there are portions of the revela¬ 
tion whose meaning comes into view only in 
times when, by the breath of the Spirit, deeper 
sentiments have been evoked and the hitherto 
unsounded depths of the mind have been made 
to declare themselves. Such times ought to 
come with the ripening years of life, when, if 
ever, the child of God becomes a seer. Hours 
of affliction, if they serve their purpose, make 
us better interpreters. Hours of contrition fit 
us to explore the mysteries of the Word, won¬ 
derfully. Hours like those recorded in the life 
of Edwards—“My sinfulness as I am in myself 
seems to me an abyss deeper than hell”—are 
full of interpretative power. The child of God 
has then visions as did Isaiah, hears out of the 
temple voices crying “Holy, holy, holy.” Such 

212 


tlK Taltl) 


times are profitable for reading the fifty-first 
Psalm. They unlock the imprecatory Psalms 
and justify them. Then it becomes possible to 
look down into the unfathomable words: “He 
was wounded for our transgressions; by His 
stripes we are healed,” and think upon Christ’s 
atoning work, which strikes through the sys¬ 
tem of the world its organizing principle. 
Such are the supreme periods of “awful in¬ 
sight,” when the Church is privileged to form¬ 
ulate its interpretation of the Word into a 
creed, to steady the faith of the generations of 
saints amid the solemn problems of this mor¬ 
tal life. Woe to the generation upon which 
the world of sensible things has so flung its 
spell as to close the avenues through which the 
world of invisible realities makes its benefi¬ 
cent approach! Woe to the beleaguered man, 
the gates of whose life are so locked against 
the overtures of heaven! “If the light that is 
in thee be darkness, how great is that dark¬ 
ness.” 


213 


Uisions of a Citizen 

It is because—and this should be fairly no¬ 
ticed—of its efficacy in building up a true 
Christian consciousness that the Bible alone 
qualifies one for exploring that wide range of 
fact which men call science. It may be de¬ 
liberately said that the understanding that has 
not been furnished out of the Bible can neither, 
because it lacks principles, see into the sys¬ 
tem of the world it explores, nor, because it 
lacks right sentiments, adequately enjoy it. 
Such influence from the Bible is indispensable 
qualification for compassing alike the sciences 
of nature and of human life. Science may well 
rejoice in the instruments and methods by 
which in later days the world has been laid 
open to scrutiny. But it is time to call by its 
ri^ht name the folly of professing to seek any 
truth whatever save under the guidance of 
revelation. Christian scholarship should not 
hesitate to make this deliberate avowal. The 
scientific mind is armed Christian conscious¬ 
ness. Even if we concede that the anatomy of 
creation can be faintly spelled out by aid of 
the telescope, the crucible and the spectro¬ 
scope alone, which we do not concede, the 
physiology of it as a living system that has 
meaning, is kno’Wn only tt) him who is in- 

214 


ClK Taitb 


structed by the Bible. To such a one the 
heaven and earth take their places promptly 
in the scheme of human probation. The Lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world, found 
on every page of the wondrous volume, send¬ 
ing its circulation into every single event of 
history and every single fibre of nature, gives 
to each thing the meaning of the whole. We 
must ask of our teachers who essay to read for 
us the Scriptures of the universe in the inter¬ 
ests of science, that they sit at the feet of the 
supernatural Scriptures and be built up to the 
mood of their evangel out of the life and lips 
of the Teacher of teachers. On absolutely no 
other condition is any science possible. Arm¬ 
ed Christian cdnsdtfusness is the scientific 
mind. 


In conclusion, I have only to repeat, with 
strong emphasis, what was said in the begin¬ 
ning, that there is occasion to be reverent and 
awbtl When WC thihk of a rev^latittn being 

215 



Uisions of a Citizen 


made to us in our darkness and sin. What 
better than that we should be moved as was 
the apostle in the Apocalypse: “And when I 
saw Him I fell at His feet as dead”; or as was 
Isaiah when the holiness of God was shown 
to him: “Then said I, woe is me for I am 
undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, 
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the 
Lord of Hosts”? But there is occasion for us 
also to be lifted up in humble exaltation. A 
revelation from heaven is in our hands, and 
we have its evidences to weigh, its meaning to 
interpret, the value of its announcements to 
appreciate, its wealth to make our own. It 
proposes to build its spiritual victories within 
our intelligence and hearts, establishing us in 
a vast fellowship of wisdom—the wide king¬ 
dom of the sons of God! Oh, my brethren, 
with erect minds let us go to meet the 
Saviour in His coming. “Stand up upon thy 
feet like a man, for I will speak unto thee.” 

Taking this wonderful Bible as the last 
word, because consciousness claims it as the 
last word, let us wrestle together mightily 
with its communications to interpret and ap¬ 
preciate and be greatened by them, in our in- 

216 


Cb« Taitb 


dividual and associated consciousness, until 
we and the universal Church which our Lord 
loves shall have gone down into the depths 
and up into the heights of the revelation, and, 
so far as is permitted to finite beings, be filled 
in purposes, sentiments and intelligence with 
the spiritual life which it reveals. 

217 


IV 

There is nothing in the universe so 
tbe Unity absolutely solitary as the selfhood 
Of l)0line$$ of ev ji The finally realized alone- 
ness of a morally unloyal soul is 
almost the most terrible hell of a soul’s pos¬ 
sible destiny. The Kingdom of God is organ¬ 
ized in its living unity over all the earth, 
through the loyalty of all its citizens around 
one Holy Father. Indeed, the only organizer 
on this earth is the Kingdom of God. All 
else is the disintegration of death. 

218 


V 


To say the least there is a growing 
Kingdom in this world, and though 
he would be an adventurous person 
who should undertake to put on 
the canvas of men’s thoughts what that King¬ 
dom is in the eye of the Scriptures in its real 
splendor, it is well for us to habituate ourselves 
to keep well in mind something of what is 
now amongst us and, if we can, what is to be 
the meridian gloriousness of which the world’s 
present privilege is the dawn. 

We cannot but be made aware, both by the 
Scripture and by observation, that this King¬ 
dom is a reality, both invisible and visible in 
this world. If anything is real it is God’s 
Kingdom. It would surprise us all to-day to 
have the disclosure made to us, how widely it 
has become extended among men. Probably 
there are few, if any, villages in any of all the 
civilized lands of the earth where some of its 
citizens are not now living; no cities in whose 
moral evil its citizenship has not set up its 
strongholds, in the fealty of their Lord and ftir 

219 


the 

Kingdom 
of God 


Uisiotis of a Citizen 


aggressive conquest in his name. Into all the 
nations of the globe, and well nigh into all the 
islands of the ocean, in our favored day the 
Kingdom, child of the word pre-incarnate and 
incarnate, has through the long centuries en¬ 
larged itself and multiplied its loyal subjects 
so that we may begin to exult in “the King¬ 
dom and dominion and the greatness of the 
Kingdom under the whole heaven.” Nor is 
the reality measured only by wide geographical 
extent. Its citizens swarm around us on these 
paths of common life on which we ourselves 
are walking, sharing our familiar occupations, 
in our families, beside us in our sanctuaries—- 
souls that shall “walk in white for they are 
worthy.” 

And this Kingdom—do not the Scriptures 
represent it so?—is a thoroughly visible one. 
If it cometh not with observation, it is of all 
things most observable. I heard a Christian 
mother last night singing her child to sleep 
with the prayerful lullaby of one of Wesley’s 
hymns. Why was not her song as really a 
revelation of the Kingdom of God on earth 
as that of the hundred and forty and four 
thousand whom John heard singing the new 

song was of the Kingdom of God in Heaven? 

220 


ClK Taith 

The other day I was with a merchant in his 
prime of manhood in his counting-room in the 
midst of a city’s tumult, moving through the 
routine of his every day with calm countenance 
and tones of large humanity, listening now to 
the plea of another human being’s distress, 
now with quiet stroke of his pen making rich 
gift to Christian beneficence, and the last I 
saw of him he was going with the same level 
soul into the wrestle of outside selfishness and 
sin, as manifestly in moral order as was Ab- 
diel. Ah, the Kingdom of God in this gain¬ 
saying world, to the eye that can interpret the 
signs of spiritual color, is a very visible one 
—to the eye of Uriel the most visible thing on 
this earth to-day. 

The Church is the institution of this King¬ 
dom of God. I do not mean the invisible 
church, for there is no invisible church, though 
often we do harm by allowing ourselves to 
speak as if there were one, unless when the 
spirits of departed children of God are 
amongst us, ministers to them who shall be 
heirs to salvation. 

‘ ‘ With a slow and solemn footstep 
Comes that messenger divine ; 

Takes the vacant chair beside me, 

Lays her gentle hand in mine. * * 

221 


Uisions of a Citizen 


The yet militant people of God on earth are 
all quite visible, being a city set on a hill 
which cannot be hid. The spirit of Him who 
is their inner life is on their foreheads, and on 
the palms of their hands. It is this visible 
church that, very imperfect still, is the King¬ 
dom of God, so splendid in the earth, wholly 
identical with the Kingdom. We must deliv¬ 
er ourselves from the vulgar syncretism of 
making the church those who have only been 
baptized and have assented to a statement of 
religious truth, and have their names in a 
catalogue, and frequent what to others are 
sanctuaries, and participate in rituals and mere 
gestures of religiousness. There is no other 
church to be thought of as the church, but 
the fellowship of those who are in the Christ 
spirit of loyalty to the supreme moral order, 
and who therefore necessarily make them¬ 
selves visibly such in all corresponding ways, 
among which, with others perhaps more in¬ 
trinsically evidential, is the obedient use of 
the sacraments, together with being instant in 
worship and hearing of the word, partly for 
becoming more thoroughly enforced for the 
exigent and vital battlefields of the daily and 
hourly duel with evil without and within. This 

222 


Cbc Taitb 


is all the church there is in this world or any 
other, however, some who are not of the 
King’s subjects may have their names mechan¬ 
ically entered in the catalogue and so put on 
lying badges. The church is the Kingdom 
of God in the midst of all this evil, a super¬ 
natural institution, widely and highly organ¬ 
ized becoming the substance of the world’s 
civic order, systems within systems, the whole 

of God’s blessing to the world. 

223 


VI 


tbc 


To understand Jesus we must take 


Influence Of account of Him not simply in view 

Pmonalitv w ^ iat He teaches, but also in 
V view of what He is. For the force 
of Jesus in human history is far more than 
the force of his instructions. You know there 
is a power in personality which yet is alto¬ 
gether silent and says nothing. The power of 
a man is measured not by what he teaches, 
but by the crowd of what he is. You may call 
it magnetism, only it is not physical, but 
moral. It is not measured by avoirdupois; it 
consists in that invisible something that we call 
character. Now I appeal to that moral mag¬ 
netism of Jesus. It had its symbol in that 
instance when met by His steady look Roman 
soldiers fell down as dead. It mastered Pi¬ 
late. It wielded the multitudes; it held at 
bay malignant Pharisees and Sadducees and 
made them afraid of him; and more than that, 
it is not too much to say that it has held as 
by a spell the attention of subsequent ages. 
There have been men who knew but little of 

224 


.j 


the Taith 


Christ's theological teaching, but in the same 
way opened to the inward flash of His per¬ 
sonality by the simple moral crowd of that 
man, they have been the heroes, and created 
the eras, of the world's life. No man gets the 
full impression of Jesus into him and through 
him without being subdued by it, and here is 
the secret of his might. Is it not true that 
here is the Generator of all recuperative mo¬ 
menta? If we could get mankind to face 
Jesus Christ and open themselves to him he 
would change the moral levels of this world's 
life. And so we have that statement of His, 
which, if it is not true, is insolent and which, 
the more true it is, is the more audacious, “And 
I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me." 
I do not believe it is possible to overstate the 
moral magnetism of Jesus and his power to 
subdue the ingenuous mind of the world. 

Epochs have proceeded from great personal 
centers, and as one star differs from another 
star in glory, so among these captains in the 
march of human life some are distinguished 
above others. The number of the greatest men 
in this function is small. Alexander carried 
the civilization of Greece into Asia and start¬ 
ed the orient into life thereby. Caesar unified 

225 


Qi$ion$ of a Citizen 


the Roman Empire and gathered the known 
world into one political organization. Char¬ 
lemagne distributed modern Europe into its 
several nationalities much as they are to-day. 
Bonaparte broke down the factitious nationali¬ 
ties of Europe and thus allowed them to be or¬ 
ganized anew on natural principles on the basis 
of natural affiliations. Jesus stands supreme 
and alone as determinant of modern life. 
Modern history is in large degree made by 
him. Christianity is the explanation of these 
nineteen centuries. 


226 


VII 


Jesus comes as a physician. He 
comes to seek and to save that 

Supernatural 

method which was lost, not ultimately to 
upbraid men or to criticise them; 
and so I am impressed with the singularity of 
his instruction in that he specifies to mankind 
absolutely, as no one else has done, the true 
method of man’s moral procedure. “What 
shall I do to be saved?” is the practical ques¬ 
tion which Christ came to answer, and how 
wonderful the reply. Imagine the world 
through all its races and through all its ages, 
listening. That answer of his stands alone. He 
that so realizes God’s holy love as to surrender 
himself to it and taking me at my word fol¬ 
lows in that path of surrender; though he were 
dead, yet shall he live. Putting penitently and 
loyally his hand in my hand, following my lov¬ 
ing footsteps, I will lead him back into light 
and into life. O, think of any of these earthly 
teachers speaking such words as these! And 
in this statement of the true law by which man 

is to be recovered the supernatural character 

227 


Uisions of a Citizen 


of Jesus is specially manifest in that with all its 
seeming simplicity it matches itself against the 
whole problem of moral recovery in man. 
Faith is not merely an intellectual attitude. It 
is rather the practical attitude of the will along 
the line of the apprehension of the requirement 
of the law. It is the requirement that the mind 
of man put itself in loyal relation to the whole 
field of divine truth, surrendering itself to all 
the requirements that truth makes of it. On 
this path of faith, therefore, the mind pro¬ 
ceeds in personal surrender along all the ways 
of recovery into truth. The mind lives again 
under the incubating influence of divine things 
up into response to them until vision and life 
are completely brought back to truth. In this 
way the will is recovered into obedience to all 
duty; sensibilities are recovered into all truth. 
The ideal restoration of which faith is the con¬ 
dition, is the recovery of the whole man. Now 
in my judgment certainly, taken in connection 
with the other content of Christ’s teaching, this 
simple law of faith which is the substance of 
Christ’s requirement, proves that he is outside 
the class of earthly philosophers and has wider, 
deeper vision than any human teacher. The 

228 


Che faith 


salvation of man by faith is the guaranty that 
Christ is more than man. It leads us to say 
with the poet, 

“ How unlike the complex works of man, 

God’s simple, artless, unencumbered plan ! ” 

This doctrine of faith has been a stumbling- 
block to philosophy. It is the sign manual of 

Jesus as being more than man. 

229 


£be Cbutrcb ant> tbe fIMnistr? 


A mighty generation is a generation 
with faith in mighty things. 


An endowed ministry is the child of 
an endowed church. 


—From Addresses. 





I 


ClK Gburcb No organ can be the avenue of an 

^ energy that does not exist primar- 

of tne Beliefs 

of the Young l y in the body the or & an serves - 

“By what means shall the church 

guard the religious life of the young?” By 
having flooding its life a religious belief of its 
own. I sometimes think the church is omnip¬ 
otent through Christ to order the religious 
thinking of mankind, much more of the young. 
If Christians did believe, firmly, deliberately, 
laboriously, maturely, with their whole hearts 
what things are the substance of the divine 
dealings with men, and would declare them, 
as they would declare them if they did believe 
so, the church would be omnipotent to make 
the young believe. It would have a ministry 
like Paul, like Wesley, like Spurgeon, and 
would overflow and flood their ministry with 
their belief, and pour their indoctrinating influ¬ 
ence in parallel and reinforcing columns all 
along upon the young, as an army pours its 
weight in support of its central line all around 

233 


Uisions of a Citizen 

upon the city walls it seeks to carry. The 
church is omnipotent; in the name of Christ 
the church of to-day is omnipotent, if she re¬ 
new her own beliefs, to transmit the faith of 
the Bible to the church of to-morrow. Let her 
revive the consciousness of her living creed; 
let her rebuke the shallow disparagement of 
standards of belief as the battle cry of her war; 
let her chant on her battle fields, as in the early 
church they did the Apostolic Creed, the ma¬ 
ture faiths of maturer periods, and multitudes 
will crowd to listen. Let the day of positive 
beliefs be revived, and the days of mighty re¬ 
vivals will return and young hearts will be the 
first under their power. “In 1871 I went to 
Livingstone in Africa, as prejudiced as the 
biggest atheist in London. I saw this solitary 
old man there, and asked myself: Why on earth 
does he stop here? For months after we met 
I found myself listening to him, and wonder¬ 
ing at the old man’s carrying out all that is 
said in the Bible. Little by little his sympathy 
for others became contagious. Mine was 
awakened. Seeing his pity, his gentleness, his 
earnestness, and how he went quietly about 
his business, I was converted by him, although 

234 


Che Cburcb and tbe ministry 

he had not tried to do it.” So says the young 
Stanley. The young need not remain without 
settled beliefs if the church will at length be¬ 
lieve. 


Many things now indicate that if the young 
who are, if any, soon to constitute the great¬ 
ness of the church, are to be prepared for this 
work, we of the church of to-day must take 
precautions. If you think the words spoken 
have presented the aspect of things in too dark 
colors, remember that more is expected of 
this than of any previous age. We are in dan¬ 
ger of being confused by considering that 
while many of the forms of human life are pre¬ 
senting fairer and more hopeful phases as we 
are going deeper into the plot of history, as¬ 
pects of evil, on their side, becoming aggravat¬ 
ed, forbid our taking account of anything else 
than the tremendous issues crowding down 
upon the field of battle. It is impossible to 

235 



Ufeions of 4 Citizen 


over-estimate the forces in the field against us. 
If there is anything the church in this age has 
to fear, it is the subtle impression engendered 
by a prevailing philosophy that the victory of 
Christ’s kingdom is to come by drift of 
events. Relatively to the peril which is en¬ 
gulfing souls in vast multitudes and to the tre¬ 
mendous hordes of evil we have to fight, we 
have no right to take comfort because the 
world, one-half of it, is better to-day than yes¬ 
terday. There is another half of the world. 
We have only one thing to think of—that, 
Christ having given us the promise of victory, 
a terrible fight is on. Meanwhile, how many 
souls are perishing! What magnitude of forces 
we have against us to increase the number! 
And “The blood rises to the horses’ bridles.” 
To-day we want the young men and women 
endowed with mighty religious beliefs that 
they may continue the solemn conflict to-mor¬ 
row, when we have fallen, and to morrow and 
to-morrow until as many as may be are res¬ 
cued to the completion of the Kingdom of the 
Redeemed, and the kingdom is completed. 

If the pulpit of to-day will teach the posi¬ 
tive supernatural Theology of the Bible, if the 

236 


Cbe Church and the ministry 

Christian home will incorporate into its life 
the verities of Christian belief, if the school of 
the church will teach the truths that Christ and 
His disciples taught, if the church will live in 
the manifest faith of Redemption, it cannot be 
doubted that a generation will come forward 
such as is needed. “I give thee the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou shalt 
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and 
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be 
loosed in heaven ” Brother ministers of the 
Gospel, let us consider well the substance of 
our teaching. Fellow Christians, let us con¬ 
sider well the methods of our testimony. 

237 


II 


^ And so, in the end, dear friends, I 

fellowship close my imperfect record. By the 
Of the Saints* Divine grace this is a goodly com¬ 
pany with whom we are asso¬ 
ciated, though now they are hidden from 
us behind the veil of our mortality. 
As I have been studying them for the last 
few days, the thought has been continually 
with me of the privilege we have of being in 
the momentum of such a church life. There 
are some, no doubt, who feel the movement 
more than do others, thanks to an endowment 
of nature or to the education of self-mastery 
which, in its best service, schools the spirit to 
be responsive. Truly it is a circumstance of 
wonderful opportunity to be in the current of 
a living stream of men and women like this. 
No man passes his existence wholly by him¬ 
self; but we, at least, are in the movement of 
an organic history, wherein the crowd of a 
remarkable Christian past presses down upon 

♦From a memorial address at the fiftieth anniversary of the 
First Congregational Church of Beloit, Wisconsin. 

238 



the Church and the ministry 

us. We of this generation of the church are 
as it is with the front of the glacier—crowded 
upon with the immense volume that is above, 
or rather like the front lines of a battle corps 
that move by the weight of all that march be¬ 
hind them. Nor is it so much that they may 
be supposed to be saying something to us, to 
animate us and make us more faithful with 
their words, as Pastor Clary placed in the cor¬ 
ner stone of the Old Stone Church “an Ad¬ 
dress to the Coming Ages.” Nor is it merely 
the hopes these men and women may be sup¬ 
posed to have cherished concerning us. Rath¬ 
er an actual impulsion comes upon us from 
their lives. Do we not, as we sit here, feel the 
crowd of it—the generation of the fathers and 
mothers, by what they sought to do and be, 
exerting a voiceless pressure on us, their chil¬ 
dren, to endeavor to do and be likewise? 

But, brethren, let us reflect—for this is a 
supreme moment, when the deepest thing 
which this now ended fifty years has to say 
to us, is to be learned. Within the momen¬ 
tum we feel from the lives we have been con¬ 
sidering is the momentum of a deeper history. 
To what supernatural help then, is it due that 

239 


Qi$ion$ of a Citizen 


these departed members of the church were 
enabled to achieve so successfully their diffi¬ 
cult probation and end their earthly career in 
hope? 

I spoke in the beginning, of the life of this 
church as being a current of supernatural life 
in the midst of surrounding death. Behold we 
the great Captain of their salvation! There ap¬ 
peared One on the field of their lives procur¬ 
ing for them by His Cross, justification in the 
presence of Divine Holiness. The spectacle of 
His dying love also was too strong for their 
sinful inclinations and their hearts were melt¬ 
ed by Him into faith and discipleship. He or¬ 
dered, too, the circumstances of their earthly 
lot, so as to furnish a discipline, in the process 
of which they were more and more matured in 
His beautiful and holy likeness. He led them, 
each one, step by step, through all their 
chequered and troubled pilgrimage. In their 
perplexities He taught them to seek and find 
relief in Him. When they were disturbed 
or weary or fevered His sympathy and His 
promises soothed them. He led them like a 
flock. The history of what they were is the 
history of the Christ working in them. When 
they went down into— 


240 


Cite Cltureb and the ministry 

1 ‘ The narrow stream of death, * * 
he held them, every one, by the hand and 
brought them to the other side. 

“ * Twas by the Lamb’s most precious blood, 
They conquered every foe.” 

In reviewing the lives of these men and wo¬ 
men, we have been reading only another chap¬ 
ter of Christ’s movement in Redemption. Ah, 
the crowd of this history is the crowd of 
Christ’s redeeming energy moving downward 
through human lives toward the great day of 
Revelation. Side by side, fellow Christians, we 
sit here in the august presence of the Son of 
God. Do you feel the holy impulsion that is 
beating, in pleading appeal, upon our hearts? 
It is more real than the descent of the glacier, 
mightier than the advancing squadrons of an 
army. “And His voice was as the sound of 
many waters. And when I heard, I fell at 
His feet as dead.” 

Oh! beneficent conqueror, Jesus Christ, by 
Thy cross justify us; by Thy Spirit sanctify 
us; by Thy Shepherd hand lead us; by Thy 
Redemption save us, for Thou only canst save. 
In the confidence of this Thy grace, we conse¬ 
crate this second half century, on which this 
church now enters, to Thee, oh, Thou, our 
Redeeming Lord. 


241 


Ill 


We are not careful enough to dis- 
€van<jdi$t criminate between the evangelist 
and Pastor and the pastor or teacher. The 
Scriptures seem to say that both 
are organs for administering the church. But 
the church had better make up its mind that 
the offices are very different, and that in case 
it needs a pastor, it is not merely an evangelist 
that it needs, whereas if it receives an evangel¬ 
ist, as far as he is merely an evangelist, with 
him in their pulpit steadily they will not have 
from him the service of a pastor, and if they 
find it out they have only themselves to blame 
or at most also the Council that ordained him 
over them with the intimation to them that he 
was the proper person to serve them as a pas¬ 
tor. I am far from saying that a pastor may 
not also be an evangelist and very likely the 
very best sometimes that a church can have, 
and that some evangelists may not be 
very good pastors. Only let us be 
alive to the difference between the man 


242 


Cbe Church and the ministry 

who is fitted to be a pastor and per¬ 
haps the very best evangelist, and the 
man who can be a very good evangelist, but is 
without resources for being a teacher and a 
permanent shepherd. As it is, churches call 
and councils ordain and seminaries prepare— 
often—men to be pastors, when the men they 
call, ordain and prepare are qualified, if in¬ 
deed they are, only to be evangelists. Conse¬ 
quently, though it is not the only reason, the 
life of the church is one of so much change, 
brokenness, irritation, like the running of ill 
related machinery, constantly interrupted, and 
in movement jerky and wasteful. 


I came in from my day’s work very thirsty. 
There is a glass of water at my hand. Who will 
tell me whether it is water or sulphuric acid? 
Some one tells me it is water, for he also came 
in and drank of it and it has made life a new 
thing to him, and he has seen it do the same 
for others. And he lifts it and puts it per- 

243 



Uisions of a Citizen 


suasively to my lips—gets me to drink of it, 
and I am refreshed, too, and in the life it gives 
I am strong again. 

“ I came to Jesus and I drank 
Of that life-giving stream ; 

My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, 

And now I live in Him.” 

The man who told me of the water and 
pressed it to my lips was my evangelist, and 
the living water was my Evangel, Gospel, 
Saviour. 


Such men were the first ministers of the 
early church; and they have not only been 
the pioneers of the word everywhere in the 
intervening period, but, however supremely 
indispensable the pastorate, it is becoming 
plain that besides the need of them for carry¬ 
ing onward the front line of the Christian cam¬ 
paign everywhere to make way for the pastor¬ 
ate, they are essential in occasional entrance, 
to precipitate the spiritual results which have 

been making ready under stated ministry, but 

244 



Che Church and the ministry 


are held in solution until some unusual word 
shall disclose them in conscious decision and 
open outward life. Neither do I say that men 
for this great office do not need thorough 
training under endowed teachers; but, with¬ 
out dwelling upon the matter, there is many a 
man you could not refuse to allow in under¬ 
taking such a work to whom you would not 
think it wise to give over the protracted care 
of churches in the development of the Chris¬ 
tian life, or have the churches receive to the 
vast responsibilities of the pastorate. 


It takes a strong and wide brain as it takes a 
strong and wide heart to comprehend Jesus 
Christ as the Saviour of the world in behalf of 
a whole parish of differing souls that all need 
Him, so as to put them all severally into per¬ 
sonal fellowship with Him; for the true pastor 
leadeth them forth into the Divine pasturage 
by calling them all by name. And this for 
ten, twenty years. And Christ in all His rich- 

245 



Uisions of a Citizen 


ness of personality in His living proportions 
and colorings, so as to make them see what 
is the blessedness of the mystery of the un¬ 
searchable riches. And not to be wearisome 
or perfunctory or repetitious or dull. Until 
the habit of being fully aware of Him shall 
have been wrought into their minds and He 
has become the atmosphere in which every¬ 
thing is measured and judged, and “the light 
of all their seeing.” And this not for their 
theories, but for their living. Under endless 
intellectual challenge, expressed and unex¬ 
pressed, and against the dead weight of moral 
inertia. Along all the process of their learn¬ 
ing the art of being Christian men and women. 
Matching the Christian life and intelligence 
to all problems of to-day and to-morroXv. All 
this and immeasurable more! With patient 
self-mastery through vision of the Invisible, 
amid all weariness of the flesh and in the ex¬ 
perience of the sorrows which come to all! If 
there is within possible availableness anywhere 
means of mental and spiritual preparatory 
training and furnishing which the Christian 
pastor can have by any provision the advan¬ 
tage of—of college or seminary or Midian— 

246 


tbe CDurcD ana m ministry 

before the problem of this work of the pastor¬ 
ate is subjected to his human limitations, let 
the churches and the councils of the churches 
not fail of insisting that he have it. Then let 
the churches call him to the pastorate. And 
let them not call to it the mere evangelist. 

247 


IV 


Picas for tl>C The burden of inducing young 
CbliStlan men to enter the ministry seems to 
ministry* be laid by Providence on the 
churches and the Christian people. 
And it is surprising how many resources sin¬ 
cere Christian people have for doing this. The 
home influence from childhood may be made 
to conduce to this powerfully. The weight of 
the pastor’s influence is beyond all estimate. 
The avenues of friendship and confidence with 
young people are so many opportunities of 
awakening the purpose of preaching the gos¬ 
pel. There should be a sentiment in the church 
that the noblest and most blessed service a. 
Christian youth can render is the Gospel Min¬ 
istry. Clergymen themselves, by a bearing— 
in character, in habit, in mien—as of the sons 
of God, may commend their calling. The as¬ 
sociated church has by the gift of the Spirit 

♦Professor Blaisdell was for many years chairman of the 
State Congregational Committee on Ministerial Education and 
his reports, year by year, from which these urgent words are 
gathered were notable features of the annual conventions. 

248 



Cbe Church and the ministry 

the prerogative of calling to the sacred office. 
Towards it should be the crowd of influence in 
Christian colleges. It cannot be doubted, that 
if the churches would consecrate themselves 
to finding a gospel ministry, a gospel minis¬ 
try could be abundantly found. 


Perhaps we are in danger of according too 
much relative importance to the undoubted 
truth that it is possible to do good in all 
professions—that there is need of good men 
in all callings. The exact question is, where is 
there the most need of more men? Probably 
5,000 young men graduated in schools of law 
the past year, besides those who entered the 
profession from offices; at least 8,000 graduat¬ 
ed at medical schools; 3,000 at schools of civil 
engineering; 700 in all schools for the minis¬ 
try. What does all this mean? My ydung 

friend, where are you needed? 

249 



Uisions of a Citizen 


There is occasion to watch the courses of 
study in our schools. The administration of 
the public schools ought to be shaped as much 
for the ministry as for the other professions. 
Especially Christian colleges ought to shape 
their courses of study at least so as not to dis¬ 
criminate against the ministry. As things are 
—I challenge denial—they as a rule lead away 
from it. The churches ought to hold them to 
their responsibility, and the Christian colleges 
ought to hold themselves. 


The Church needs a new baptism of inter¬ 
est in an educated ministry. Any congrega¬ 
tion that has a young man in it should see that 
the question of the personal duty of preparing 
for the ministry is well upon his mind and do 
what they can, pastor and people, to help him 
answer it rightly. 


250 



I have heard two pastors say with- 
(Continued) in a year—and I must say it sur- 
prised and shocked me—one of 
them, that he would use no influ¬ 
ence to induce his son to enter the min¬ 
istry, and the other that he would not 
let any of his sons enter the minis¬ 
try if he could help it. I would ask 
that we all prayerfully review such atti¬ 
tude and see whether it is in the spirit of the 
New Testament, and the language of a heroic 
and conquering church. Probably it explains 
why so few are taking up the work of preach¬ 
ing the Gospel, why so little money and few 
men for the ministry of the world. My breth¬ 
ren, I think we should be pretty thoughtful 
about this matter. You remember what the 
Hugenot mother said, as she stood by the 
road along which they were dragging her 
mangled son to the burning pile of faggots: 
“Glory be to Jesus Christ and His witnesses!” 
1 know no better opportunity of faith, whose 
office it is tb See unseen things, than that which 

251 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


a Christian pastor has, seeing his son go out 
into the responsible self-controls of the min¬ 
istry in this coming generation. That eye of 
the Christian must be under eclipse that does 
not see the glory of the patience of it. 

Money will not buy the power of an apos¬ 
tolic ministry any more now than in the day 
when the indignant Peter rebuked simony. 
Christ would not allow it. An empowered 
ministry is the child of an empowered church. 
A ministry only so originated, only goes be¬ 
fore, and, reflecting the glory of Christ upon 
the church, thereby draws the church to a 
higher level. Christ abiding in the churth 
call 3 apostles and gives thfc’m thfeir Pa'pli^m. 

252 


To a commanding general of an 
(Continued) army, sweeping with his eye the 
field of impending battle, no other 
question weighs so heavily as 
whether his army is organized under suitable 
leaders; for not only do they determine the 
indispensable lines of the conflict, but out of 
their persons come the inspiration and impulse 
which bring victory. Attention is asked to the 
particular of spiritual leadership. Think how 
prominent an element this was with our Lord 
in the initial organization of His church. 
There were brought out from the body of be¬ 
lievers twelve young men who, after be¬ 
ing suitably trained, were to have rolled over 
upon them the burden of forming the convic¬ 
tions, enlisting the energies and morally con¬ 
trolling the life of the church in its apostolic 
period. You are familiar wth the roll-call of 
their names. Simon called Peter, Andrew his 
brother, James the son of Zebedee and John 
his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas, 
Matthew, James the son of Alpheus and Leb- 
beus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas. What 
men! We seem to be hearing the catalogue 

253 


Uisions of a Citizen 


of Napoleon’s marshals—Massina, Nay, Ber- 
nadotte, Soult, MacDonald. It shows how 

careful our Lord was to put at the head of the 
various portions of the church He was estab¬ 
lishing men who were endowed to lead other 
men. 

This matter of finding suitable men to lead 
has always been thought to be of superior im¬ 
portance. In any department of enterprise, 
undertaking to accomplish a successful his¬ 
tory, men look around them to find the per¬ 
sons who by natural qualities are fit to be put 
in the front of the work. We do leave many 
things that involve great interests to go on at 
hap-hazard, as best they may, and they 
stumble forward only to a feeble outcome, and 
it is always considered shiftlessness to do so. 
If we are really in earnest to make an enter¬ 
prise succeed, whether it be a mercantile ad¬ 
venture, a line of transcontinental or trans¬ 
oceanic transportation, the success of a party 
campaign, the management of a quadri-cen- 
tennial exposition, or the administration of a 
civil government, we go over and over the 
list of persons who are within reach, make 
careful selection of the right men, call them 
out of their retirement, confront them with 

254 


the Cburcb ana the ministry 

the responsibility, plying them with all avail- 
ble inducements until our importunity has 
yoked them to the problem. So Richard 
Cobden did with John Bright. So Abraham 
Lincoln did with General Grant. So James 
Gordon Bennett did with Henry Stanley. If 
we leave the administration of our churches 
without taking precisely this course, as I fear 
we are too much doing, we shall only have 
a gratuitous Providence to thank that the con¬ 
flict we are engaged in does not prove a fail¬ 
ure for which we are responsible. 

There are two or three ways of practical 
thinking by which we are apt to be influenced 
to allow such negligence and these are oper¬ 
ating now, perhaps, more than ever, though al¬ 
ways operating less or more. One is an easy¬ 
going belief that the Head of the church is 
managing the affairs of His kingdom and will 
see to raising up men when they are needed, 
and when they are' not needed will work 
without them; a belief which no one ever has 
had the hardihood to deliberately defend, how¬ 
ever he may surrender himself to it. For we 
all know that Providence moves in an or¬ 
derly manner and never does one thing save in 

255 


Uisions of a Citizen 

view of the presence of another which condi¬ 
tions it, so that if he is going to train Israel 
adequately to be a prosperous people, Samuel’s 
mother must have a hand in getting Samuel 
ready, and, if the kingdom is to be well ad¬ 
ministered, David’s pastor, Samuel, must go 
out and find the young man, David, and train 
him and anoint him and see him well on in 
his work. 

One of the most subtle sources of neglect 
in estimating the importance of suitable lead¬ 
ers and in making efforts to find and furnish 
them is a most pernicious inference we draw 
from the most true and the most false doctrine 
of Evolution. There are a number of de¬ 
partments of public and private life, in which 
this doctrine is operating in cutting the nerve 
of responsible agency. 

The growth of the Christian Church is apt 
to be trusted, perhaps unconsciously, to a law 
of steady development; “Leaders,” we say, 
“will be an element in the evolved product. 
The fittest will survive, or those who survive 
will be fittest and the leaders.” Now, what¬ 
ever we may say of the infinitesimal increment 
in the life of mankind, it will never prevent 

256 


Cbe Church and the ministry 

the indispensableness of care and effort and 
desperate insistence in finding the marshals to 
order the elemental march. The Church 
must be evolved by the prior evolution, 
through the sagacious interposition of the 
Church, of leaders whose spirit is to contrib¬ 
ute the force which shall only secure the evo¬ 
lution of the Church in turn. Perhaps, how¬ 
ever, our chiefest source of neglect is an im¬ 
pression engendered by a growing spirit of 
democracy, that, after all, if not the age of 
leadership, the age of special prerogative of 
practical leadership in the Church, is past. I 
say, engendered by a growing democracy. 
There was a time when God’s reviving Provi¬ 
dence was supposed to proceed by communi¬ 
cation of spiritual impulses through the medi¬ 
um of leading and endowed souls. Communi¬ 
ties of mankind, in the state and in the Church, 
were thought to be approached by the Divine 
Spirit through souls in nearer touch with 
Heaven. There were diversities of gifts; 
among them government, teaching, prophecy. 
So the art of leading forward the flock of God 
lay in finding for them shepherds, under shep¬ 
herds, taking lessons from the Head Shep- 

257 


Qi$ion$ of a Citizen 


herd. Our churches have not outgrown such 
Divine ordering. It is said by Mr. Bryce, in 
his American Commonwealth, that the Amer¬ 
ican conception of the office of our national 
Congress is to follow and give issue to the 
decisions of the people. It will be fatal when 
a similar conception assigns to the Ministry 
the office of following and giving issue only 
to the convictions of religious people, who are 
supposed to know what they want in teaching, 
discipline, order and life. All things consid¬ 
ered, it is a significant feature of our times— 
a tendency to underestimate the value of lead¬ 
ers and to neglect the providing of them. 

Possibly, after all, the main reason for not 
being more earnest in the matter of providing 
Christian leaders is lack of vigorous Christian 
life. Wherever life of any kind is in full vigor, 
it proceeds at once to institute the organs 
which are to be the pioneers, sending them 
to their places in the front of growth, and in 
this manner supply the conditions of depend¬ 
ent growth all throughout the vital structure. 
If there should be a widespread revival in our 
churches there would not be a day interven¬ 
ing before we should begin to be calling on 

258 


Cfte Cburcb ana the ministry 

young men of proper qualities to prepare to 
be heralds of the new salvation. What we 
should do if our church life were active, we 
certainly should do now as the obligatory pro¬ 
curative of an active Christian life. It will 
indeed do no good to call young men into 
the ministry by exhausted spiritual forces; 
spiritual energies should be revived, and by 
their persistent crowd upon young men they 
should carry them as upon the tide of flood 
to the preaching everywhere of the Word. 

Perhaps some who hear me may think that 
in speaking of present effort as being so little 
I am underestimating what is really being done 
in the way of bringing young men to the min¬ 
istry. Let us consider the matter for a mo¬ 
ment. There certainly is the influence of the 
theological seminaries, which, whenever they 
hear of a young man in college who is looking 
towards the ministry, may possibly bring to 
bear upon him some feeble influence to con¬ 
firm his purpose, and this is about all a the¬ 
ological seminary can do. We cannot ex¬ 
pect the ministry to be recruited by the pull of 
theological seminaries. No one inside a 
Christian college can help being aware of the 

259 


Ui$iott$ of a Citizen 


influence which a mother to-day is exerting 
upon her son, whom perhaps in his infancy 
she consecrated, to induce him into this which 
her piety tells her is the highest calling on 
earth; and in how many a young collegian’s 
life has there gone well on through his course 
of study a conflict between a mother’s and 
perhaps a father’s and sister’s wish and other 
plans which have broken in upon the atten¬ 
tion of his eager heart. Now and then there 
is a Christian teacher in school and college 
who makes it his care to lay upon the heart of 
young men the sacred calling of Christian 
leadership, though you would all be surprised 
to find how rarely this is done of late by even 
Christian teachers, whether in academy or 
college—even the Christian college. Occa¬ 
sionally there is a church in which it is one 
of the settled methods of its Christian life to 
put the arm of its spiritual strength around 
young men who are members in it, to bring 
them into the ministry. How often do you 
ever hear a petition in the prayer-meeting of a 
church, asking that the spirit would lead 
young men to preach the gospel? 

“ More laborers for the harvest field— 

More reapers for the Lord.” 

260 



ClK Cburcb and tbe ministry 

In earlier years it was deemed the most 
sacred part of the province of the pastor to 
train his suitable young men for the ministerial 
office. It is well known that not many pastors 
do it now. Since my boyhood I have not 
heard a sermon of this kind in an ordinary 
pastorate. Is it too much to say that, apart 
from the influence exerted upon young men 
by some few of their Christian mates in school 
and college, and the influence of a mother and 
sister, and occasionally a father, with now 
and then a rare teacher, a young man, if he 
gets into the ministry, does so by the solitary 
movement of the Divine Spirit in that mys¬ 
terious, solemn laboratory of his own inward 
life? 

Perhaps this would not be so hopeless a 
state of things if in the forum of the young 
man’s mind there were not, exerting most 
persuasive influences on the other side, an 
advocacy of far different character. How many 
Christian families are destitute of the real 
faith that enables them to see the reasons why 
their sons should preach the gospel and exert 
not only silent but open influence on the other 
side! So that if the son is a preacher of the 

261 


Unions of a Citizen 


gospel it is at least without any encouragement 
from home. Then there is the trend of almost 
all the schools—the public schools and almost 
all the teachers in almost all the schools. 
Then there are so many inviting avenues open 
in a hundred different directions, and when 
a careful teacher has succeeded in leading a 
young fellow up almost to the very door of 
a theological seminary another teacher comes 
along, perhaps a Christian brother, and with¬ 
out a thought, puts in his way an opening 
which undoes all which for years has been 
planned. The young man who goes into the 
ministry nowadays goes into it in spite of the 
strongest and most various influences to the 
contrary, and I sometimes wonder that so 
many enter the ministry as do. Is it strange 
that so many, often the brightest, the most 
promising, and, I may say, the most spiritually 
endowed, fail to find the place they ought to 
take at the head of the columns of the militant 
hosts of Christ’s followers? 

Especially is it strange when so many are 
saying, who ought to know better than say 
it—and do know better—that most insignifi¬ 
cant and insipid thing, which young men are 

262 


tbe Cburcb and tbe ministry 


ever repeating, that there is need of good 
men in every profession? Oh, how many a 
young man whom I have been urging to con¬ 
sider his duty of the gospel ministry, has met 
me with the word: “Why, I think there is 
need of good men in other professions; why, 
I think I can be useful as a lawyer or as a 
business man.” And through this sieve are 
sifted out into other callings so many of our 
best young men, and how few are left, and how 
much we need to put them on their guard and 
fortify them by the considerations which ne¬ 
cessities suggest! For two considerations in¬ 
deed; one, that we have few left to fill the cap¬ 
taincies of the Church, and those often not the 
most suitable; another, that, declining in this 
way the ministry—for mainly it is a subter¬ 
fuge—the men who do so seldom become of 
great spiritual productiveness in the callings 
they actually choose. 

I fear that we have not yet become aware 
for what purpose, and therefore how much, 
we must make larger plans and efforts to se¬ 
cure a Christian Ministry. Fix your eye on 
half a dozen of the most productive pastors 
in our Wisconsin church and change your 

263 


Qi$ioti$ of a Citizen 


conception of them so as to adapt them to 
the needs of our other churches in other por¬ 
tions of the state, the newer and the older all 
along the northern half of our territory. We 
want to strike for a larger supply of just such 
grand pastors of churches. We have, per¬ 
haps, said enough about having the treasure 
of the gospel in earthen vessels. We cannot 
wholly disregard the call of the churches for 
able men. I mean men of intellectual might 
induced by spiritual insight. To grasp greatly 
and wield mightily the truths of sin, the Cross, 
holiness, faith, Christ, the kingdom; with spir¬ 
itual momentum enough to generate it in view 
of these things in other men and in the church¬ 
es; ever to make actual conquests; with 
breadth enough, sympathies enough, patience 
enough, to project and head great evangeliz¬ 
ing movements and so apprehend the Provi¬ 
dential movements of the time as to interpret 
them to a confused and bewildered generation 
seeking after a sign; captains of spiritual pro¬ 
ductiveness as there are captains of industry 
and transportation and scientific research! 

We can only bow reverently and ask our¬ 
selves what would come to pass if the church 

264 


Che Church ana the ministry 


of Wisconsin were thoroughly awakened by 
the Divine Spirit. The churches of Wisconsin 
would flow together into beautiful concurrence 
of Christian work, and out of its bosom would 
deploy the excellence of our young men. Shall 
anything less be our endeavor this coming 
year—the best young men of Wisconsin for 
the gospel ministry? 


265 


It is at all times the most manifest 
(Continued) obligation and essential feature of 
the Church—and we do well to 
consider it now—to evolve out of 
its life, of its sons and daughters, those 
who shall publish Christ to men, and 
to furnish them for the work. It should 
be continually emphasized that it is not 
enough for the churches to be hospit¬ 
able to the willingness of young men 
and women to enter into the ministry of carry¬ 
ing the gospel, and to the furnishing of help 
when asked, but that it is the very essential 
function of a body of believers in Christ to re¬ 
mind and admonish the spiritually designated 
and to bring the spiritual designation home 
persuasively to their recognition and inward 
compliance, with assurances the warmest, and 
promises, as of course, that in meeting the dif¬ 
ficulties and bearing the burdens of obeying 
that designation, the help of the churches shall 
be cheerfully forthcoming. Christian parents 
and Christian friends should be reminded con¬ 
stantly that the warm influence implied in the 

266 


Cbe Clwrcb and tbe ministry 

parental relation, and the peculiarly winning 
influences Christian friendship affords, are re¬ 
sponsible for becoming living forces, under di¬ 
rection of wise judgment, for bringing these 
young men and women forward into the work 
to which they are called, and which, without 
such influences, they would not be likely to 
find. It would seem as if it had been made 
clear by reiterated illustration that the churches 
of which we are members have been and are by 
no means as faithful in the matter of develop¬ 
ing such a ministry as the Head of the Church 
has asked, and expects, us to be; that the 
meager and doled out supply of an endowed 
gospel ministry and of the help rendered men 
in becoming ready for it is sadly incommen¬ 
surate with either our privileges or the needs 
of the interest at stake. It has seemed plain 
that, comparing with the number of the chil¬ 
dren out of the bosom of our churches fur¬ 
nished, and often willingly furnished and 
willingly helped, into any other calling, 
the number of the children furnished and 
helped to the ministry brings no small 
discredit on the comparative estimate, on 
the part of the churches, of the im- 

267 


Oisions or a Citizen 

portance of the propagation of the gospel 
and of making men acquainted with Christian 
truth. The conviction has been growing for 
some years now among us, in our deepest 
heart, that as an enterprise carried on with a 
view to solving a given and urgent spiritual 
problem, by their unreadiness to push the mat¬ 
ter of Christian propagandism in furnishing 
and sending to the front an endowed aposto- 
late of men and women, the Church in com¬ 
parison with other organized enterprises, is ad¬ 
ministered in such way as to make sure of only 
the tardiest success, if not of actual failure. It 
may with considerable truth be said, that, so far 
as our Congregational church is under con¬ 
sideration, we are playing, in this respect, with 
the problem we have on our hands. You will 
probably, on calm deliberation, not dissent 
from the judgment that, unless there be very 
great gain in the matter of sending to and sus¬ 
taining in processes of education young men 
and women for the ministry, the church will 
justly fall under the suspicion of being more 
or less insincere in its desire of evangelizing 
society and in its profession of belief that 
Christ is the only Saviour of mankind. In- 

268 


the Church and the ministry 

deed, it should be our supreme effort to make 
it seem to each one of us all that it is incum¬ 
bent upon us personally to bring to bear upon 
young men, and induce the churches to bring 
to bear upon them, the utmost influence each 
case warrants, to turn the proper persons to¬ 
wards the Christian Ministry, and thereby 
make it certain that the wise proclamation of 
the gospel go everywhere, at home and abroad. 
Standing at this point of time it seems as if no 
one had slightest room not to be aware that 
the churches—all of them—should be astir to 
the letting of the sacred truth be known every¬ 
where that Jesus Christ in His Holy Love is 
neighboring to all human beings for their sal¬ 
vation, by many out of the bosom of the 
churches—many their endowed ones and 
choicest, those with the eagle eye, the mighty 
heart, the furnished intelligence, well instruct¬ 
ed—receiving from the churches, from which 
they come, the baptism of the Spirit. 

We all in our better moments feel the weight 
of an inference from this obligation, in the di¬ 
rection of an immeasurable necessity on the 
part of our churches to reach after and culti¬ 
vate deeper attainments in piety and spiritual 

269 


Ui$io«$ of 4 Citizen 

power. Spiritual forces and not mechanical 
are what this world needs. The Ministry 
which is wanted can in the main be furnished 
only out of the life of intelligently consecrated 
and holy churches. The might of the min¬ 
istry is the child of the might of the churches. 
Could we follow back the paths along which 
the effective ministers of the gospel have gone 
to their productive, however humble, minis¬ 
tries in winning men, we should find the places 
of their origin in homes of deep and lowly 
piety. The lesson of this hour is that we 
must furnish more of our sons and daughters 
to the ministry, helping them, as we send 
them, with our benedictions; send them out of 
a deeper spiritual acquaintance with Christ. A 
Christian Ministry with full baptism of the 
Divine Spirit out of the heart and with the help 
of the churches—this is our duty, our privilege 
and must be the burden of our prayer. 

270 


It is worthy of inquiry whether the 
(Continued) training the young men preparing 
for the ministry are receiving em¬ 
phasizes sufficiently personal re¬ 
ligious experience. It is hard to speak of the 
present in comparison with the past with 
great confidence. It is a remark often made 
that the Theological Seminaries of to-day are 
not places of decided spiritual atmosphere. 
Personal observation and inquiries anxiously 
put to men, who, considerable in numbers, 
walk the historic aisles of one such place, set 
the matter in serious question. If there is 
one thing which the churches should insist 
in making challenge of and having settled, it 
is whether the young men who are coming to 
lead and wield for Christ their men and wo¬ 
men and youth, have the reason of doing it 
in a living and loving experience of the great 
truths, into the pasturage and power of which 
they are to be the leaders. As all the phys¬ 
iological forces of brain and heart and trunk 

o 

271 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


send out to the hand the call that to be their 
organ it must be full of the vital current and 
in the secret of the mystery of life, so no 
school, seminary, academy, or college, should 
be aloof from the searching inquisition of the 
Christ that is in the churches. Wisconsin 
must make the Seminaries responsible that 
their teaching of the young men be only the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost. 


The Seminaries should be asked that the 
training they give should be of such form as 
to educate the rising ministry to the work of 
organizing and developing churches. Two 
things are at once impressed upon us as be¬ 
ing essential, as we look over the problem of 
the Gospel in saving men; one, that the main 
realities of the Gospel be effectually declared 
in such way that Christ shall be made to reach 
men with his appeal—that Christ shall find 

272 



Cbe Cbwrcb ana tbe ministry 

men. The other is that the life engendered by 
this appeal be gathered into organic form and 
developed in all its practical inferences in the 
way of individual and associated gift and per¬ 
sonal endeavor. It is one thing to do the first 

of these; it is quite a different thing to do the 
other. 


273 





flIMsstons 


There are no outposts in the conflict 
of Christ with wrong and sin. 

—An Editorial. 





I 


Remember this further in our 

? tt JMWJ Home Missionary work: that a 

for funds* , , . ,. .... 

part of our honorable responsibil¬ 
ity, upon meeting which depends 
our success, is to maintain our financial in¬ 
tegrity. Our dependence is largely on men 
who know how business ought to be done, 
who do their own with a high sense of busi¬ 
ness honor, and will respect us and help us 
about in proportion as they see us following 
the same principles. We must keep our faith 
with our missionaries, for we are under busi¬ 
ness contract with them, and not to fulfill it is 
dishonest. We must, by early contributions, 
every one of us being sure to do more than 
his part, make it possible to pay our mission¬ 
aries their salaries quarterly, as in the contract 

♦Professor Blaisdell was Vice-President of the Wisconsin 
Home Missionary Society ior several years and President from 
1895 until the time of his death, these offices involving member¬ 
ship in the Executive Board. Most of his words in the inter¬ 
ests of this cause were extemporaneous, and only these frag, 
ments remain to represent some of the deepest stirrings of his 
soul. 


27 1 



mm or a Citizen 


we promise to do. We usually underestimate 
our part, so we must make allowance and give 
more than we think our part to be. Provi¬ 
dence will surely give us credit in His book 
of account. Have a little more trust in the 
business integrity of our Heavenly Father 
than hitherto. “I will make thee ruler over 
* More than that, how many of us have 

learned the sweetness of sharing the suffer¬ 
ings of Christ? Who makes any sacrifice? 
By the Cross we conquer. No debt this year! 


One thing more to be remembered in our 
Home Missionary work. Get men to be loyal 
to Christ and not merely have their names on 
the church roll, and you have settled the mat¬ 
ter of business integrity between man and 
man. . You have silenced the wicked gossip 
which is a cancerous diathesis in almost all 
communities and communicated by inocula- 

278 



missions 


tion of one diseased soul to others naturally 
predisposed. There are other bacilli than 
those of typhus and cholera. You have made 
lawyers love justice and law more than success 
and gain. You have taught judges to be 
above political inspiration. You have elim¬ 
inated the rancor of party narrowness and 
bigotry. You have settled the difficulty of la¬ 
bor and capital. You have dried up the ulcer¬ 
ous discharge of crime upon society. You 
have made home pure and happy, parents 
thoughtful and wise, and children obedient 
and virtuous. You have made mind thought¬ 
ful, spiritual, luminous. The true gospel is 
the peace, virtue, order and life of states. 

279 


II 


When King Agamemnon had after 

Carrying ten years conquered and taken 

Power J 1 

Troy, in order to have the news 

most quickly known to his wife, 
Clytemnestra, and to his people, he lighted a 
beacon on Mount Ida. Instantly it was re¬ 
peated on the neighboring headland of Lem¬ 
nos. On and on beacon after beacon carried 
the message until from the Arachnaean head¬ 
land it was flashed to Argos and all the Ar- 
give land was ablaze with thanksgiving and 
joy. It ought to be so when any important 
truth is communicated to the Church at large. 

A few weeks ago a circular was sent to all 
the pastors of our Convention, reporting the 
emergency of Home Missions. I wonder if 
every pastor to whom the word came has 
kindled his beacon—“a great spike of flame” 
—to make known the matter to his people. 
The greater wonder is whether, when the peo¬ 
ple have received the message, they have got¬ 
ten their minds also aflame about it and hand- 

280 


missions 


ed it on from one to another until the real 
state of things has become matter of common 
knowledge and great concern. This is the 
trouble, not only in regard to this particular 
thing of Home Missions, but in regard to al¬ 
most everything which ought to be reported 
as being a matter of great importance. Chris¬ 
tians, and many pastors, have so little carry¬ 
ing power! In olden times, in the days when 
England and Scotland were not yet united 
into one peaceful nation, the moment there 
was trouble on the Scottish border from moun¬ 
tain-top to mountain-top the messenger-fires 
sent the story to the innermost heart Of the 
highlands. The very most desirable thing 
among us now is that carrying power in Chris¬ 
tian people. 

It would seem as if there were enough in any 
one of these messages to set us aflame, if we 
really have an interest in the Gospel and its 
progress, as we profess to have and probably 
do have. We get interested about other mes¬ 
sages and carry them to our neighbors and 
friends, sometimes when we had better not. 
Why should we not carry messages which 
concern so great a thing as our Master’s busi' 

281 


Ui$ion$ of a Citizen 


ness and our Master's kingdom? We certain¬ 
ly ought to do so, and if we have heard any¬ 
thing which is sent by any one as a word to the 
churches we ought, giving it due considera¬ 
tion ourselves, instantly, out of a real sense of 
our responsibility to do so, to hand it on. 

It is for the lack of this carrying power that 
the church is so fearfully impenetrable. There 
is really nothing in the whole problem of mak¬ 
ing the world better so disheartening as the 
impenetrability of the Christian church. It is 
almost an impossible thing to get a really vital 
message through to the ear of the whole 
church. Suppose your heart is almost break¬ 
ing with something you think to be of the most 
absolute importance and which you are sure 
the whole church ought to be made thought¬ 
ful about, some great truth to feed their piety 
with, some grand strategic forward movement 
they ought to undertake, some new incentive 
you know they ought to come under the in¬ 
fluence of, some danger they ought to resist. 
How can anything you say reach much further 
than those within the immediate sound of your 
voice? How can you hope to get at the re¬ 
moter portions of the church? Who is to 

282 


missions 


know anything you have on your mind save a 
few who stand close to you? 

If only there were live pastors and live 
Christian souls everywhere it would be easy. 
They would take it up and carry it, carry it, 
carry it everywhere. It almost seems some¬ 
times as if the going forth of truth from ear¬ 
nest lips fared much as does the flight of a bul¬ 
let or a cannon ball. Instead of meeting help 
from transmitting souls, like successive beacon 
fires, it has only to contend against a resisting 
medium and soon drops spent. Indeed many 
people are, in relation to the publishing of im¬ 
portant truths, like feather-beds. They do not 
transmit force or voice. It absolutely stops 
with them. They arrest it, balk it. You 
never need expect that what you say will go 
any further. 

Hence the great discouragement; the 
church as a body of associated minds who 
ought to be mountain-tops of flame all over 
the State is so fearfully impenetrable, imper¬ 
vious, not to be reached by appeals. So little 
transmission of truth! Hence the truth makes 
its way slowly because so few take pains to 
hand it on. 


283 


Uisions of a Citizen 

Will you not try—some of you—^to have 
more carrying power? The next message that 
comes to you—nay, the last message that came 
to you—will you not tell it to your neighbor 
and ask him to tell it to his? “They went 
everywhere preaching the word.” “And the 
word increased mightily and prevailed.” 

284 


Ill 


£bri$t’$ The wonderful widening of man’s 
UlidCItess mechanical energy in our day calls 

Of Ours * or a corres P onc ^ n g widening of 
the spiritual energy of Christian 

people. This means that the largeness of our 
Christian helpfulness should be brought to 
the compass and catholicity of Christ's. It is 
what we are constantly praying for and as¬ 
piring to. It is that our helpfulness should not 
ever be confined to any immediate center 
where we reside or which we are individually 
interested in. Not we, nor our family, nor our 
city, nor our country—nothing short of the 
world, is the “all the world” Christ has His 
heart set upon, has sent us to give the Gospel 
to, and we ought to have our hearts set upon. 
Nor is it ever right to say that we can best 
serve “all the world” by helping directly only 
our center, and so give and do only for it. 
That has a plausible sound; but Christ has no 
such narrowness, it does not accord with the 
physiology of the Christian body, and it 

285 


Uisions of a Citizen 

dreadfully imperils the intelligent wideness of 
one’s own character. Think of Thomas Chal¬ 
mers talking in that way—taking care of Glas¬ 
gow and letting Scotland go; even if that were 
the best way to take care of Glasgow, which, 
a thousand times, it is not! Hear that great 
heart, while toiling in city missions amid the 
filth of Glasgow, praying for Scotland, his 
heart burning for Scotland, mightily working 
for Scotland. 

But then wideness means everywhereness, 
fulness, nearness, too, for that is implied in 
“all the world.” So, if we have the Christlike- 
ness we are always praying for, we shall fill in 
the outline of the very far with the helpfulness 
of the very near. Foreign missions, home 
missions, city missions, home and family-altar 
missions, all kinds of missions. Oh, the width, 
oh, the depth, oh, the fulness, of a true Chris¬ 
tian mind! What a thing we pray for when we 
pray to be like Him! Let us put narrowness 
aw T ay from us; don’t let us ever say, “No, we 
must take care of the near.” Let us put far- 
offness away from us; don’t let us ever say, 
“No, we must take care of the far off.” This 
is the time for the elect souls to aspire to be 

286 


missions 


like the Christ who is among them as their 
leader. Especially we want a magnificently 
endowed pastorate 

“ The wideness of God’s mercy 
Tike the wideness of the sea.” 

Yes, but Christ is strong and we are weak, 
very weak. Well, that brings us to just the 
real, profoundest, truth. More strength of the 
mind that was in Christ, fuller surrender. This 
is the line of advance now: a deeper baptism, 
till we know, by experience, the meaning of 
the word “sacrifice,” which few of us do now 
know, and are really become “partakers of 
Christ’s sufferings.” Let us think of the Cross, 

and all will come right. 

287 


T desire to be so trained by 
the experiences of this life as 
to be fitted for any service in 
any world. 

















